Or  CALIF.  UBItAftY.  LOS 


FRIDA 
T  H  I R  I 


THE 
MTH 


\WSON 


autd 


gnitlwmoe  «»w  ywdt  w«s  I " 
Jool  I 


v  York 
Doubled  &  Company 


I  saw  there  was  something  missing  from  her  great  blue  eyes. 
I  looked  ;  gasped  " 


FRIDAY,    THE 
THIRTEENTH 


A  Novel   by 
THOMAS  W.  LAWSON 


Frontispitct  in  colour  bj 

Sigismond  dt  Ivanowski 


New  York 

Doubleday,  Page  &  Company 
1907 


Copyright,  1906,   1907,  by  The  Ridgway  Company 

Copyright,  1907,  by  Doubleday,  Page  &  Company 

Published,  February,  1907 


All  rights  reserved. 

including  that  of  translation  into  foreign  languages, 
including  the  Scandinavian 


I  DEDICATE  THIS  BOOK 

ALL  THAT   IS   GOOD   IN  THIS   LITTLE  WAIF,  WHICH   IS   VERY 

DEAR   TO   ME,    I    KNOW    A    JUST   GOD    WILL    PLACE    TO 

HER   CREDIT.      ALL   THAT  IS  MEAN  AND  LOW  AND 

HUMAN   COULD   NEVER   HAVE    BEEN  BIRTHED 

HAD    SHE     BEEN    NIGH     TO    GUIDE    AN 

EVER   WAYWARD   PEN. 

The  Author. 
The  Nest,  Dreamwold, 
August,  1906. 


2130941 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 


CHAPTER  I 

"FRIDAY,  the  13th;  I  thought  as  much.  If 
Bob  has  started,  there  will  be  hell,  but 
I  will  see  what  I  can  do." 

The  sound  of  my  voice,  as  I  dropped  the 
receiver,  seemed  to  part  the  mists  of  five 
years  and  usher  me  into  the  world  of  Then  as 
though  it  had  never  passed  on. 

I  had  been  sitting  in  my  office,  letting  the 
tape  slide  through  my  fingers  while  its  every 
yard  spelled  "panic"  in  a  constantly  rising 
voice,  when  they  told  me  that  Brownley  on 
the  floor  of  the  Exchange  wanted  me  at  the 
'phone,  and  "quick."  Brownley  was  our 
junior  partner  and  floor  man.  He  talked 
with  a  rush.  Stock  Exchange  floor  men 
in  panics  never  let  their  speech  hobble. 

"Mr.  Randolph,  it's  sizzling  over  here, 
and  it's  getting  hotter  every  second.  It's 
Bob — that  is  evident  to  all.  If  he  keeps  up 
this  pace  for  twenty  minutes  longer,  the 
sulphur  will  overflow  'the  Street*  and  get 

9 


10      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

into  the  banks  and  into  the  country,  and  no 
man  can  tell  how  much  territory  will  be 
burned  over  by  to-morrow.  The  boys  have 
begged  me  to  ask  you  to  throw  yourself  into 
the  breach  and  stay  him.  They  agree  you 
are  the  only  hope  now." 

"Are  you  sure,  Fred,  that  this  is  Bob's 
work?"  I  asked.  "Have  you  seen  him?" 

'Yes,  I  have  just  come  from  his  office, 
and  glad  I  was  to  get  out.  He's  on  the  war- 
path, Mr.  Randolph — uglier  than  I  ever 
saw  him.  The  last  time  he  broke  loose  was 
child's  play  to  his  mood  to-day.  Mother 
sent  me  word  this  morning  that  she  saw 
last  night  the  spell  was  coming.  He  had 
been  up  to  see  her  and  sisters,  and  mother 
thought  from  his  tone  he  was  about  to  dis- 
appear again.  When  she  told  me  of  his 
mood,  and  I  remembered  the  day,  I  was 
afraid  he  might  seek  his  vent  here.  Also  I 
heard  of  his  being  about  town  till  long  after 
midnight.  The  minute  I  opened  his  office 
door  this  morning  he  flew  at  me  like  a  pan- 
ther. I  told  him  I  had  only  dropped  in  on 
my  rounds  for  an  order,  as  they  were  run- 
ning off  right  smart,  and  I  didn't  know  but 
he  might  like  to  pick  up  some  bargains. 
'Bargains!'  he  roared,  'don't  you  know  the 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     11 

day?  Don't  you  know  it  is  Friday,  the 
13th?  Go  back  to  that  hell-pit  and  sell, 
sell,  sell.'  'Sell  what  and  how  much?'  I 
asked.  'Anything,  everything.  Give  the 
thieves  every  share  they  will  take,  and  when 
they  won't  take  any  more,  ram  as  much 
again  down  their  crops  until  they  spit  up  all 
they  have  been  buying  for  the  last  three 
months!'  Going  out  I  met  Jim  Holliday 
and  Frank  Swan  rushing  in.  They  are 
evidently  executing  Bob's  orders,  and  have 
been  pouring  Anti-People's  out  for  an  hour. 
They  will  be  on  the  floor  again  in  a  few 
minutes,  so  I  thought  it  safer  to  call  you 
before  I  started  to  sell.  Mr.  Randolph, 
they  cannot  take  much  more  of  anything 
in  here,  and  if  I  begin  to  throw  stocks  over, 
it  will  bring  the  gavel  inside  of  ten  minutes; 
and  that  will  be  to  announce  a  dozen  failures. 
It's  yet  twenty  minutes  to  one  and  God 
only  knows  what  will  happen  before  three. 
It's  up  to  you,  Mr.  Randolph,  to  do  some- 
thing, and  unless  I  am  on  a  bad  slant,  you 
haven't  many  minutes  to  lose." 

It  was  then  I  dropped  the  receiver  with 
"I  thought  as  much!"  As  I  had  been 
fingering  the  tape,  watching  five  and  ten 
millions  crumbling  from  price  values  every 


12     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

few  minutes,  I  was  sure  this  was  the  work 
of  Bob  Brownley.  No  one  else  in  Wall 
Street  had  the  power,  the  nerve,  and  the 
devilish  cruelty  to  rip  things  as  they  had  been 
ripped  during  the  last  twenty  minutes.  The 
night  before  I  had  passed  Bob  in  the  theatre 
lobby.  I  gave  him  close  scrutiny  and  saw 
the  look  of  which  I  of  all  men  best  knew 
the  meaning.  The  big  brown  eyes  were 
set  on  space;  the  outer  corners  of  the  hand- 
some mouth  were  drawn  hard  and  tense 
as  though  weighted.  As  I  had  my  wife 
with  me  it  was  impossible  to  follow  him, 
but  when  I  got  home  I  called  up  his  house 
and  his  clubs,  intending  to  ask  him  to  run  up 
and  smoke  a  cigar  with  me,  'but  could  locate 
him  nowhere.  I  tried  again  in  the  morn- 
ing without  success,  but  when  just  before 
noon  the  tape  began  to  jump  and  flash  and 
snarl,  I  remembered  Bob's  ugly  mood,  and 
all  it  portended. 

Fred  Brownley  was  Bob's  youngest  brother, 
twelve  years  his  junior.  He  had  been  with 
Randolph  &  Randolph  from  the  day  he 
left  college,  and  for  over  a  year  had  been 
our  most  trusted  Stock  Exchange  man.  Bob 
Brownley,  when  himself,  was  as  fond  of  his 
"baby  brother,"  as  he  called  him,  as  his 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      13 

beautiful  Southern  mother  was  of  both; 
but  when  the  devil  had  possession  of  Bob — 
and  his  option  during  the  past  five  years 
had  been  exercised  many  a  time — mother 
and  brother  had  to  take  their  place  with  all 
the  rest  of  the  world,  for  then  Bob  knew  no 
kindred,  no  friends.  All  the  wide  world 
was  to  him  during  those  periods  a  jungle 
peopled  with  savage  animals  and  reptiles 
to  hunt  and  fight  and  tear  and  kill. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  for  me  to  explain 
who  Randolph  &  Randolph  are.  For  more 
than  sixty  years  the  name  has  spoken  for 
itself  in  every  part  of  the  world  where  dollar- 
making  machines  are  installed.  No  rail- 
road is  financed,  no  great  "industrial"  pro- 
jected,without  by  force  of  habit,  hat-in-handing 
a  by-your-leave  of  Randolph  &  Randolph, 
and  every  nation  when  entering  the  market 
for  loans,  knows  that  the  favour  of  the  fore- 
most American  bankers  is  something  which 
must  be  reckoned  with.  I  pride  myself  that 
at  forty-two,  at  the  end  of  the  ten  years  I  have 
had  the  helm  of  Randolph  &  Randolph,  I  have 
done  nothing  to  mar  the  great  name  my  father 
and  uncle  created,  but  something  to  add  to  its 
sterling  reputation  for  honest  dealing,  fearless, 
old-fashioned  methods,  and  all-round  integrity. 


14     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Bradstreet's  and  other  mercantile  agencies 
say,  in  reporting  Randolph  &  Randolph, 
;<  Worth  fifty  millions  and  upward,  credit 
unlimited."  I  can  take  but  small  praise 
for  this,  for  the  report  was  about  the  same 
the  day  I  left  college  and  came  to  the  office 
to  "learn  the  business."  But,  as  the  sur- 
vivor of  my  great  father  and  uncle,  I  can 
say,  my  Maker  as  my  witness,  that  Ran- 
dolph &  Randolph  have  never  loaned  a  dollar 
of  their  millions  at  over  legal  rates,  6  per 
cent,  per  annum;  have  never  added  to 
their  hoard  by  any  but  fair,  square  business 
methods;  and  that  blight  of  blights,  frenzied 
finance,  has  yet  to  find  a  lodging-place  beneath 
the  old  black-and-gold  sign  that  father  and 
uncle  nailed  up  with  their  own  hands  over  the 
entrance. 

Nineteen  years  ago  I  was  graduated  from 
Harvard.  My  classmate  and  chum,  Bob 
Brownley,  of  Richmond,  Va.,  was  graduated 
with  me.  He  was  class  poet,  I,  yard  mar- 
shal. We  had  been  four  years  together  at 
St.  Paul's  previous  to  entering  Harvard. 
No  girl  and  lover  were  fonder  than  we  of 
each  other. 

My  people  had  money,  and  to  spare,  and 
with  it  a  hard-headed,  Northern  horse-sense. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      15 

The  Brownleys  were  poor  as  church  mice, 
but  they  had  the  brilliant,  virile  blood  of  the 
old  Southern  oligarchy  and  the  romantic, 
"salaam- to-no-one"  Dixie-land  pride  of  be- 
fore-the-war  days,  when  Southern  prodigality 
and  hospitality  were  found  wherever  women 
were  fair  and  men's  mirrors  in  the  bottom 
of  their  julep-glasses. 

Bob's  father,  one  of  the  big,  white  pil- 
lars of  Southern  aristocracy,  had  gone  through 
Congress  and  the  Senate  of  his  country 
to  the  tune  of  "Spend  and  not  spare,"  which 
left  his  widow  and  three  younger  daughters 
and  a  small  son  dependent  upon  Bob,  his 
eldest. 

Many  a  warm  summer's  afternoon,  as 
Bob  and  I  paddled  down  the  Charles,  and 
often  on  a  cold,  crispy  night  as  we  sat  in  my 
shooting-box  on  the  Cape  Cod  shore,  had 
we  matched  up  for  our  future.  I  was  to 
have  the  inside  run  of  the  great  banking 
business  of  Randolph  &  Randolph,  and 
Bob  was  eventually  to  represent  my  father's 
firm  on  the  floor  of  the  Stock  Exchange. 
"I'd  die  in  an  office,"  Bob  used  to  say,  "and 
the  floor  of  the  Stock  Exchange  is  just  the 
chimney-place  to  roast  my  hoe-cake  in." 
So  when  our  college  days  were  over  my  able 


16      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

old  father  stood  us  up  against  the  wall  in 
his  office,  and  tried  us  by  his  tests,  and  proud 
we   both   were   when   dad   said,   "Jim,   you 
and  Bob  have  chosen  well.     You,  Jim,  are 
just   the   chap   to   step   into   my  shoes/  and 
Bob    is    cut    to    a    thirty-second    and    sixty- 
fourth  for  the  floor."     Proud  we  were,  not 
so  much   because   of  what   my  father's   de- 
cision meant  for  our  future,  for  we  knew  we 
should  get  into  the   business   all   right,   but 
because  our  judgment  was  indorsed  by  one 
we  both  thought  as  near  infallible  as  man 
could  be  in  anything  pertaining  to  business 
affairs. 

Bob  was   then  twenty-two  and  I  a  year 
older— I  one  of  your  raw-boned  New  Eng- 
land lads,  not  much  for  prettiness,  but  will- 
ing to  weigh  in  race-day  with  any  of  them 
for    steadiness    and    staying    qualities;     Bob 
as  handsome  as  they  made  them,  six  feet  tall 
in   his  gym   sandals,   straight   as   an   arrow, 
with  the  form  of  an  Indian,  and  one  of  those 
clean,   brave,   all-for-heart-nothing-for-policy, 
smiling    faces    to    which    men    yield    willing 
friendliness,  and  women,  idolatry.     Bob's  eyes 
were   as    big   and   round   and   purple-brown 
as    an   English    bulldog's,    unfathomable,   at 
once  mild  and  stern,  with  a  childish  come- 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      17 

and-go  perplexity;  his  nose  as  straight  as 
though  chiselled  by  a  master  for  a  Greek 
medallion,  with  thin  curved  lips  to  corre- 
spond, and  a  high,  broad  forehead,  whose 
whiteness  was  set  off  by  a  luxuriance  of 
hair  that  seemed  jet-black,  but  was  of  the 
same  rare  purple-brown  as  his  eyes.  But 
it  was  the  poise  of  Bob's  head  that  gave  his 
good  looks  their  crown.  Whoever  has  seen 
a  bunch  of  two-year-old  colts  in  a  long-grass 
Kentucky  paddock,  when  the  darky  boy 
lets  loose  his  shrill  whistle  at  "taking-up 
time,"  is  sure  to  remember  one  that  threw 
up  its  head  and  kept  it  poised  to  make  sure 
it  had  caught  the  call.  Grace,  strength, 
and  unharnessed  wayward  leadership  are 
there  personified.  Some  such  suggestion  was 
ever  in  the  carriage  of  Bob's  shapely  head 
and  vigorous  figure,  and  dull  indeed  would 
be  the  man  or  woman  who  failed  to  recognise 
the  man's  rare  distinction  and  masterfulness. 

Indeed,  as  I  said  a  bit  back,  Bob  Brownley 
was  by  all  odds  one  of  the  handsomest  men 
I  have  ever  seen,  but  besides  that,  he  was  a 
sterling,  manly,  unaffected  fellow,  as  true 
as  steel,  as  brave  as  a  lion,  and  the  best 
comrade  friend  ever  had. 

Perhaps  it  was  because  his  father's  death 


18      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

had  saddled  Bob's  youth  with  the  heavy 
responsibilities  of  husbanding  and  directing 
his  family's  slim  finances  that  he  took  to 
business  as  a  swallow  to  the  air.  We  en- 
tered the  office  of  Randolph  &  Randolph 
on  the  same  day,  and  on  its  anniversary,  a 
year  later,  my  father  summoned  us  into  his 
office  for  a  sort  of  tally-up  talk.  Neither 
of  us  quite  knew  what  was  coming,  and 
we  thrilled  with  pleasure  when  he  said: 

"Jim,  you  and  Bob  have  fairly  outdone 
my  expectations.  I  have  had  my  eye  on 
both  of  you  and  I  want  you  to  know  that 
the  kind  of  industry  and  business  intelli- 
gence you  have  shown  here  would  have  won 
you  recognition  in  any  banking-house  on 
'the  Street.'  I  want  you  both  in  the  firm 
— Jim  to  learn  his  way  round  so  he  can  step 
into  my  shoes;  you,  Bob,  to  take  one  of 
the  firm's  seats  on  the  Stock  Exchange." 

Bob's  face  went  red  and  then  pale  with 
happiness  as  he  reached  for  my  father's  hand. 

"I'm  very  grateful  to  you  sir,  far  more 
so  than  any  words  can  say,  but  I  want  to 
talk  this  proposition  of  yours  over  with 
Jim  here  first.  He  knows  me  better  than 
any  one  else  in  the  world  and  I've  some 
ideas  I'd  like  to  thrash  out  with  him." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      19 

"Speak   up   here,   Bob,"   said   my  father. 

"Well,  sir,  I  should  feel  much  better  if 
I  could  go  over  there  into  the  swirl  and 
smash  it  out  for  myself.  You  see  if  I  could 
win  out  alone  and  pay  back  the  seat  price, 
and  then  make  a  pile  for  myself,  if  you  felt 
later  like  giving  me  another  chance  to  come 
into  the  firm,  then  I  should  not  be  laying 
myself  open  to  the  charge  of  being  a  mere 
pensioner  on  your  friendship.  You  know 
what  I  mean,  sir,  and  won't  think  I  am 
filled  with  any  low-down  pride,  but  if  you  will 
let  me  have  the  price  of  a  Stock  Exchange 
seat  on  my  note,  and  will  give  me  the  chance, 
when  I  get  the  hang  of  the  ropes,  to  handle 
some  of  the  firm's  orders,  I  shall  be  just 
as  much  beholden  to  you  and  Jim,  sir,  and 
shall  feel  a  lot  better  myself." 

I  knew  what  Bob  meant;  so  did  father, 
and  we  were  glad  enough  to  do  what  he 
asked,  father  insisting  on  making  the  seat 
price  in  the  form  of  a  present,  after  explain- 
ing to  us  that  a  foundation  Stock  Exchange 
rule  prohibited  an  applicant  from  borrow- 
ing the  seat  price.  Four  years  after  Bob 
Brownley  entered  the  Stock  Exchange  he 
had  paid  back  the  forty  thousand,  with 
interest,  and  not  only  had  a  snug  fifty  thou- 


20      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

sand  to  his  credit  on  Randolph  &  Randolph's 
books,  but  was  sending  home  six  thousand 
a  year  while  living  up  to,  as  he  jokingly  put 
it,  "an  honest  man's  notch."  I  may  say 
in  passing,  that  a  Wall  Street  man's  notch 
would  make  twice  six  thousand  yearly 
earnings  cast  an  uncertain  shadow  at  Christ- 
mas time.  Bob  was  the  favourite  of  the  Ex- 
change, as  he  had  been  the  pet  at  school  and 
at  college,  and  had  his  hands  full  of  business 
three  hundred  days  in  the  year.  Besides 
Randolph  &  Randolph's  choicest  commissions, 
he  had  the  confidential  orders  of  two  of  the 
heavy  plunging  cliques. 

I  had  just  passed  my  thirty-second  birth- 
day when  my  kind  old  dad  suddenly  died. 
For  the  previous  six  years  I  had  been  get- 
ting ready  for  such  an  event;  that  is,  I  had 
grown  accustomed  to  hearing  my  father 
say:  "Jim,  don't  let  any  grass  grow  in 
getting  the  hang  of  every  branch  of  our 
business,  so  that  when  anything  happens 
to  me  there  will  be  no  disturbance  in  'the 
Street'  in  regard  to  Randolph  &  Ran- 
dolph's affairs.  I  want  to  let  the  world 
know  as  soon  as  possible  that  after  I  am  gone 
our  business  will  run  as  it  always  has.  So 
I  will  work  you  into  my  directorships  in 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      21 

those  companies  where  we  have  interests 
and  gradually  put  you  into  my  different 
trusteeships." 

Thus  at  father's  death  there  was  not  a 
ripple  in  our  affairs  and  none  of  the  stocks 
known  as  "The  Randolph's"  fluttered  a 
point  because  of  that,  to  the  financial  world, 
momentous  event.  I  inherited  all  of  father's 
fortune  other  than  four  millions,  which  he 
divided  up  among  relatives  and  charities, 
and  took  command  of  a  business  that  gave 
me  an  income  of  two  millions  and  a  half  a 
year. 

Once  more  I  begged  Bob  to  come  into 
the  firm. 

"Not  yet,  Jim,"  he  replied.  "I've  got 
my  seat  and  about  a  hundred  thousand  capi- 
tal, and  I  want  to  feel  that  I'm  free  to  kick 
my  heels  until  I  have  raked  together  an  even 
million  all  of  my  own  making;  then  I'll 
settle  down  with  you,  old  man,  and  hold 
my  handle  of  the  plough,  and  if  some  good 
girl  happens  along  about  that  time — well, 
then  it  will  be  'An  ivy-covered  little  cot' 
for  mine." 

He  laughed,  and  I  laughed  too.  Bob 
was  looked  upon  by  all  his  friends  as  a  bad 
case  of  woman-shy.  No  woman,  young  or 


old,  who  had  in  any  way  crossed  Bob's  orbit 
but  had  felt  that  fascination,  delicious  to  all 
women,  in  the  presence  of: 

A  soul  by  honour  schooled, 
A  heart  by  passion  ruled — 

but  he  never  seemed  to  see  it.  As  my  wife 
— for  I  had  been  three  years  married  and 
had  two  little  Randolphs  to  show  that  both 
Katherine  Blair  and  I  knew  what  marriage 
was  for — never  tired  of  saying,  "Poor  Bob! 
He's  woman-blind,  and  it  looks  as  though 
he  would  never  get  his  sight  in  that  direction." 
"Then  again,  Jim,"  he  continued  in  a 
tone  of  great  seriousness,  "there's  a  little 
secret  I  have  never  let  even  you  into.  The 
truth  is  I  am  not  safe  yet — not  safe  to  speak 
for  the  old  house  of  Randolph  &  Randolph. 
Yes,  you  may  laugh — you  who  are,  and 
always  have  been,  as  staunch  and  steady 
as  the  old  bronze  John  Harvard  in  the  yard, 
you  who  know  Monday  mornings  just  what 
you  are  going  to  do  Saturday  nights  and  all 
the  days  and  nights  in  between,  and  who 
always  do  it.  Jim,  I  have  found  since  I 
have  been  over  on  the  floor  that  the  South- 
ern gambling  blood  that  made  my  grand- 
father, on  one  of  his  trips  back  from  New 
York,  though  he  had  more  land  and  slaves 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      23 

than  he  could  use,  stake  his  land  and  slaves 
— yes,  and  grandmother's  too — on  a  card- 
game,  and — lose,  and  change  the  whole 
face  of  the  Brownley  destiny — those  same 
gambling  microbes  are  in  my  blood,  and 
when  they  begin  to  claw  and  gnaw  I  want 
to  do  something;  and,  "Jim — and  the 
big  brown  eyes  suddenly  shot  sparks — "if 
those  microbes  ever  get  unleashed,  there'll 
be  mischief  to  pay  on  the  floor — sure  there 
will!" 

Bob's  handsome  head  was  thrown  back; 
his  thin  nostrils  dilated  as  though  there 
was  in  them  the  breath  of  conflict.  The 
lips  were  drawn  across  the  white  teeth  with 
just  part  enough  to  show  their  edges,  and 
in  the  depths  of  the  eyes  was  a  dark-red 
blaze  that  somehow  gave  the  impression  one 
gets  in  looking  down  some  long  avenue  of 
black  at  the  instant  a  locomotive  head- 
light rounds  a  curve  at  night. 

Twice  before,  way  back  in  our  college 
days,  I  had  had  a  peep  at  this  gambling 
tempter  of  Bob's.  Once  in  a  poker  game 
in  our  rooms,  when  a  crowd  of  New  York 
classmates  tried  to  run  him  out  of  a  hand 
by  the  sheer  weight  of  coin.  And  again  at 
the  Pequot  House  at  New  London  on  the 


24      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

eve  of  a  varsity  boat-race,  when  a  Yale 
crowd  shook  a  big  wad  of  money  and  taunts 
at  Bob  until  with  a  yell  he  left  his  usually 
well-leaded  feet  and  frightened  me,  whose 
allowance  was  dollars  to  Bob's  cents,  at  the 
sum  total  of  the  bet-cards  he  signed  before 
he  cleared  the  room  of  Yale  money  and 
came  to  with  a  white  face  streaming  with 
cold  perspiration.  These  events  had  passed 
out  of  my  memory  as  the  ordinary  student 
breaks  that  any  hot-blooded  youth  is  liable 
to  make  in  like  circumstances.  As  I  looked 
at  Bob  that  day,  while  he  tried  to  tell  me 
that  the  business  of  Randolph  &  Randolph 
would  not  be  safe  in  his  keeping,  I  had  to 
admit  to  myself  that  I  was  puzzled.  I  had 
regarded  my  old  college  chum  not  only  as 
the  best  mentally  harnessed  man  I  had  ever 
met,  but  I  knew  him  as  the  soul  of  honour, 
that  honour  of  the  old  story-books,  and  I 
could  not  credit  his  being  tempted  to  jeop- 
ardise unfairly  the  rights  or  property  of  an- 
other. But  it  was  habit  with  me  to  let  Bob 
have  his  way,  and  I  did  not  press  him  to 
come  into  our  firm  as  a  full  partner. 

Five  years  later,  during  which  time  affairs, 
business  and  social,  had  been  slipping  along 
as  well  as  either  Bob  or  I  could  have  asked, 


I  was  preparing  for  another  sit-down  to 
show  my  chum  that  the  time  had  now  come 
for  him  to  help  me  in  earnest,  when  a  queer 
thing  happened — one  of  those  unaccountable 
incidents  that  God  sometimes  sees  fit  to 
drop  across  the  life-paths  of  His  children, 
paths  heretofore  as  straight  and  far-ahead- 
visible  as  highways  along  which  one  has 
never  to  look  twice  to  see  where  he  is  travel- 
ling; one  of  those  events  that,  looked  at 
retrospectively,  are  beyond  all  human  under- 
standing. 

It  was  a  beautiful  July  Saturday  noon 
and  Bob  and  I  had  just  "packed  up"  for 
the  day  preparatory  to  joining  Mrs.  Ran- 
dolph on  my  yacht  for  a  run  down  to  our 
place  at  Newport.  As  we  stepped  out  of 
his  office  one  of  the  clerks  announced  that  a 
lady  had  come  in  and  had  particularly 
asked  to  see  Mr.  Brownley. 

"Who  the  deuce  can  she  be,  coming  in 
at  this  time  on  Saturday,  just  when  all  alive 
men  are  in  a  rush  to  shake  the  heat  and  dirt 
of  business  for  food  and  the  good  air  of  all 
outdoors?"  growled  Bob.  Then  he  said, 
"Show  her  in." 

Another  minute  and  he  had  his  answer. 

A  lady  entered. 


26      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

"Mr.  Brownley?"  She  waited  an  instant 
to  make  sure  he  was  the  Virginian. 

Bob  bowed. 

"I  am  Beulah  Sands,  of  Sands  Landing, 
Virginia.  Your  people  know  our  people, 
Mr.  Brownley,  probably  well  enough  for 
you  to  place  me." 

"Of  the  Judge  Lee  Sands's?"  asked  Bob, 
as  he  held  out  his  hand. 

"I  am  Judge  Lee  Sands's  oldest  daugh- 
ter," said  the  sweetest  voice  I  had  ever  heard, 
one  of  those  mellow,  rippling  voices  that 
start  the  imagination  on  a  chase  for  a  mock- 
ing-bird, only  to  bring  it  up  at  the  pool  be- 
neath the  brook-fall  in  quest  of  the  harp 
of  moss  and  watercresses  that  sends  a  bub- 
bling cadence  into  its  eddies  and  swirls.  Per- 
haps it  was  the  Southern  accent  that  nibbled 
off  the  corners  and  edges  of  certain  words  and 
languidly  let  others  mist  themselves  together, 
that  gave  it  its  luscious  penetration — however 
that  may  be,  it  was  the  most  no-yesterd ay- 
no-tomorrow  voice  I  had  ever  heard.  Before 
I  grew  fully  conscious  of  the  exquisite  beauty 
of  the  girl,  this  voice  of  hers  spelled  its  way 
into  my  brain  like  the  breath  of  some  be- 
witching Oriental  essence.  Nature,  environ- 
ment, the  security  of  a  perfect  marriage 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      27 

have  ever  combined  to  constitute  me  loyal 
to  my  chosen  one,  yet  as  I  stood  silent, 
like  one  dumb,  absorbing  the  details  of  the 
loveliness  of  this  young  stranger  who  had  so 
suddenly  swept  into  my  office,  it  came 
over  me  that  here  was  a  woman  intended 
to  enlighten  men  who  could  not  under- 
stand that  shaft  which  in  all  ages  has  without 
warning  pierced  men's  hearts  and  souls — 
love  at  first  sight.  Had  there  not  been 
Katherine  Blair,  wife  and  mother — Katherine 
Blair  Randolph,  who  filled  my  love-world 
as  the  noonday  August  sun  fills  the  old- 
fashioned  well  with  nestling  warmth  and 
restful  shade — after  this  interval,  looking 
back  at  the  past,  I  dare  ask  the  question — 
who  knows  but  that  I  too  might  have  drifted 
from  the  secure  anchorage  of  my  slow  Yan- 
kee blood  and  floated  into  the  deep  waters  ? 

Beauty,  the  cynic's  scoff,  is  in  the  eye  of 
the  beholder,  or  in  an  angle  of  vision — 
mere  product  of  lime-light,  point  of  view, 
desire — but  Beulah  Sands 's  was  beauty  be- 
yond cavil,  superior  to  all  analysis,  as  definite 
as  the  evening  star  against  the  twilight  sky. 
In  height  medium,  girlish,  but  with  a  figure 
maturely  modelled,  charmingly  full  and 
rounded,  yet  by  very  perfection  of  proper- 


tion  escaping  suggestion  of  "plumpness." 
The  head,  surrounded  and  crowned  with 
a  wealth  of  dark  golden  hair,  rested  on  a 
neck  that  would  have  seemed  short  had  its 
slender  column  sprung  less  graciously  from 
the  lovely  lines  of  the  breast  and  shoulders 
beneath.  It  was  on  the  face,  however,  and 
finally  on  the  eyes  that  one's  glances  inevi- 
tably lingered — the  face  rose-tinted,  with  dim- 
ples in  either  of  the  full  cheeks,  entering 
laughing  protest  against  the  sad  droop  that 
brought  slightly  down  the  corners  of  a  mouth 
too  large  perhaps  for  beauty,  if  the  coral 
curve  of  the  lips  had  been  less  exquisitely 
perfect.  The  straight,  thin-nostriled  nose,  the 
broad  forehead,  the  square,  full  jaw  almost 
as  low  at  the  points  where  they  come  be- 
neath the  ears  as  at  the  chin,  suggested 
dignity  and  high  resolve  coupled  with  a 
power  of  purpose,  rare  in  woman.  The 
combination  of  forehead,  jaw,  and  nose  was 
seldom  seen.  Had  it  been  possessed  by  a 
man  it  would  surely  have  driven  him  to  the 
tented  field  for  his  profession.  But  the 
greatest  glory  of  Beulah  Sands  was  her  eyes 
— large,  full,  very  gray,  •  very  blue,  vivid 
with  all  the  glamour  of  her  personality, 
full  of  smiles  and  tears  and  spirituality  and 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      29 

passion;  one  instant,  frankly  innocent,  they 
illuminated  the  face  of  a  blonde  Madonna; 
the  next,  seen  through  the  extraordinary, 
long,  jet-black  eye-lashes  underneath  the 
finely  pencilled  black  brows,  they  caressed, 
coquetted,  allured.  I  afterward  found  much 
of  this  girl's  purely  physical  fascination  lay 
in  this  strange  blending  of  English  fairness 
with  Andalusian  tints,  though  the  abiding 
quality  of  her  charm  was  surely  in  an  ex- 
altation of  spirit  of  which  she  might  make 
the  dullest  conscious.  As  she  stood  look- 
ing at  Bob  in  my  office  that  long-ago  noon, 
gracefully  at  ease  in  a  suit  of  gray,  with  a 
gray-feathered  turban  on  her  head,  and  tiny 
lace  bands  at  neck  and  wrist,  she  was  very 
exquisite,  exceedingly  dainty,  and,  though 
Southerner  of  Southerners,  very  unlike  the 
typical  brunette  girl  who  comes  out  of  Dixie 
land. 

This  girl  who  came  into  our  office  that 
July  Saturday,  just  in  time  to  interfere  with 
the  outing  Bob  Brownley  and  I  had  laid 
out,  and  who  was  destined  to  divert  my 
chum's  heretofore  smooth-flowing  river  of 
existence  and  turn  it  into  an  alternation  of 
roaring  rushes  and  deadly  calms,was  truly  the 
most  exquisite  creature  one  could  conceive  of. 


30      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

I  know  my  thought  must  have  been  Bob's 
too,  for  his  eyes  were  riveted  on  her  face. 
She  dropped  the  black  lashes  like  a  veil  as 
she  went  on: 

"Mr.  Brownley,  I  have  just  come  from 
Sands  Landing.  I  am  very  anxious  to  talk 
with  you  on  a  business  matter.  I  have 
brought  a  letter  to  you  from  my  father. 
If  you  have  other  engagements  I  can  wait 
until  Monday,  although,"  and  the  black 
veiling  lashes  lifted,  showing  the  half-laughing, 
half -pathetic  eyes,  "I  wanted  much  to  lay 
my  business  before  you  at  the  earliest  minute 
possible." 

There  was  a  faint  touch  of  appeal  in  the 
charming  voice  as  she  spoke  that  was  irre- 
sistible, and  we  were  both  willing  to  forget 
we  had  lunch  waiting  us  on  the  Tribesman. 

"Step  into  my  office,  Miss  Sands,  and 
all  my  time  is  yours,"  said  Bob,  as  he  opened 
the  door  between  his  office  and  mine.  After 
I  had  sent  a  note  to  my  wife,  saying  we 
might  be  delayed  for  an  hour  or  two,  I  set- 
tled down  to  wait  for  Bob  in  the  general 
office,  and  it  was  a  long  wait.  Thirty  minutes 
went  into  an  hour  and  an  hour  into  two 
before  Bob  and  Miss  Sands  came  out.  After 
he  had  put  her  in  a  cab  for  her  hotel,  he 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      31 

said  in  a  tone  curiously  intent:  "Jim,  I 
have  got  to  talk  with  you,  got  to  get  some 
of  your  good  advice.  Suppose  we  hustle 
along  to  the  yacht  and  after  lunch  you  tell 
Kate  we  have  some  business  to  go  over. 
I  don't  want  to  keep  that  girl  waiting  any 
longer  than  possible  for  an  anwer  I  cannot 
give  until  I  get  your  ideas."  After  lunch, 
on  the  bow  end  of  the  upper  deck  Bob  re- 
lieved himself.  Relieved  is  the  word,  for 
from  the  minute  he  had  put  Miss  Sands  into 
the  carriage  until  then,  it  was  evident  even 
to  my  wife  that  his  thoughts  were  anywhere 
but  upon  our  outing. 

"Jim,"  he  began  in  a  voice  that  shook 
in  spite  of  his  efforts  to  make  it  sound  calm, 
"there  is  no  disguising  the  fact  that  I  am 
mightily  worked  up  about  this  matter,  and 
I  want  to  do  everything  possible  for  this 
girl.  No  need  of  my  telling  you  how  sacred 
we  have  got  to  keep  what  she  has  just  let 
me  into.  You'll  see  as  I  go  along  that  it 
is  sacred,  and  I  know  you  will  look  at  it  as 
I  do.  Miss  Sands  must  be  helped  out  of 
her  trouble. 

"Judge  Lee  Sands,  her  father,  is  the  head 
of  the  old  Sands  family  of  Virginia.  The 
Virginia  Sands  don't  take  off  their  bonnets 


32      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

to  another  family  in  this  country,  or  else- 
where, for  that  matter,  for  anything  that 
really  counts.  They  have  had  brains,  learn- 
ing, money,  and  fixed  position  since  Vir- 
ginia was  first  settled.  They  are  the  best 
people  of  our  State.  It  is  a  cross-road  say- 
ing in  Virginia  that  a  Sands  of  Sands  Land- 
ing can  go  to  the  bench,  the  United  States 
Senate,  the  House,  or  the  governor's  chair 
for  the  starting,  and  nearly  all  of  the  men 
folks  have  held  one  or  all  of  these  honours 
for  generations.  The  present  judge  has  held 
them  all.  I  don't  know  him  personally, 
although  my  people  and  his  have  been  thick 
from  away  back.  Sands  Landing  on  the 
James  is  some  fifty  miles  above  our  home. 
The  judge,  Beulah  Sands's  father,  is  close 
on  to  seventy,  and  I  have  heard  mother  and 
father  say  is  a  stalwart,  a  Virginia  stalwart. 
Being  rich — that  is,  what  we  Virginians  call 
rich,  a  million  or  so — he  has  been  very  active 
in  affairs,  and  I  knew  before  his  daughter 
told  me,  that  he  was  the  trustee  for  about 
all  the  best  estates  in  our  part  of  the  coun- 
try. It  seems  from  what  she  tells,  that  of 
late  he  has  been  very  active  in  developing 
our  coal-mines  and  railroads,  and  that  par- 
ticularly he  took  a  prominent  hand  in  the 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      33 

Seaboard  Air  Line.  You  know  the  road, 
for  your  father  was  a  director,  and  I  think 
the  house  has  been  prominent  in  its  bank- 
ing affairs.  Now,  Jim,  this  poor  girl,  who, 
it  seems,  has  recently  been  acting  as  the 
judge's  secretary,  has  just  learned  that  that 
coup  of  Reinhart  and  his  crowd  has  com- 
pletely ruined  her  father.  The  decline  has 
swamped  his  own  fortune,  and,  what  is  worse, 
a  million  to  a  million  and  a  half  of  his  trust 
funds  as  well,  and  the  old  judge — well, 
you  and  I  can  understand  his  position.  Yet 
I  do  not  know  that  you  just  can,  either,  for 
you  do  not  quite  understand  our  Virginia 
life  and  the  kind  of  revered  position  a  man 
like  Judge  Sands  occupies.  You  would  have 
to  know  that  to  understand  fully  his  present 
purgatory  and  the  terrible  position  of  this 
daughter,  for  it  seems  that  since  he  began 
to  get  into  deep  water  he  has  been  relying 
upon  her  for  courage  and  ideas.  From  our 
talk  I  gather  she  has  a  wonderful  store  of 
up-to-date  business  notions,  and  I  am  con- 
vinced from  what  she  lays  out  that  the 
judge's  affairs  are  hopeless,  and,  Jim,  when 
that  old  man  goes  down  it  will  be  a  smash 
that  will  shake  our  State  in  more  ways  than 
one.  _— 


34      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

"Up  to  now  the  girl  has  stood  up  to  the 
blow  like  a  man  and  has  been  able  to  steady 
the  judge  until  he  presents  an  exterior  that 
holds  down  suspicion  as  to  his  real  financial 
condition,  although  she  says  Reinhart  and 
his  Baltimore  lawyer,  from  the  ruthless  way 
they  put  on  the  screws  to  shake  out  his  hold- 
ings in  the  Air  Line,  must  have  a  line  on  it 
that  the  judge  is  overboard.  The  old  gentle- 
man can  keep  things  going  for  six  months 
longer  without  jeopardising  any  of  the  re- 
maining trust  funds,  of  which  he  has  some 
two  millions,  and  while  his  wife,  who  is 
an  invalid,  knows  the  judge  is  in  some  trouble, 
she  does  not  suspect  his  real  position.  His 
daughter  says  that  when  the  blow  came, 
that  day  of  the  panic,  when  Reinhart  jammed 
the  stock  out  of  sight  and  scuttled  her 
father's  bankers  and  partners  in  the  road, 
the  Wilsons  of  Baltimore,  she  had  a  fright- 
ful struggle  to  keep  her  father  from  going 
insane.  She  told  me  that  for  three  days 
and  nights  she  kept  him  locked  in  their 
rooms  at  their  hotel  in  Baltimore,  to  prevent 
him  from  hunting  Reinhart  and  his  lawyer 
Rettybone  and  killing  them  both,  but  that 
at  last  she  got  him  calmed  down  and  to- 
gether they  have  been  planning. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      35 

"Jim,  it  was  tough  to  sit  there  and  listen 
to  the  schemes  to  recoup  that  this  old  gentle- 
man and  this  girl,  for  she  is  only  twenty-one, 
have  tried  to  hatch  up.  The  tears  actually 
rolled  down  my  cheeks  as  I  listened;  I 
couldn't  help  it;  you  couldn't  either,  Jim. 
But  at  last  out  of  all  the  plans  considered, 
they  found  only  one  that  had  a  tint  of  hope 
in  it,  and  the  serious  mention  of  even  that 
one,  Jim,  in  any  but  present  circumstances, 
would  make  you  think  we  were  dealing  with 
lunatics.  But  the  girl  has  succeeded  in 
making  me  think  it  worth  trying.  Yes, 
Jim,  she  has,  and  I  have  told  her  so,  and  I 
hope  to  God  that  that  hard-headed  horse- 
sense  of  yours  will  not  make  you  sit  down 
on  it." 

Bob  Brownley  had  got  to  his  feet;  he 
was  slipping  the  shackles  of  that  fiery,  roman- 
tic, Southern  passion  that  years  in  college 
and  Wall  Street  had  taught  him  to  keep 
prisoner.  His  eyes  were  flashing  sparks.  His 
nostrils  vibrated  like  a  deer  buck's  in  the  au- 
tumn woods.  He  faced  me  with  his  hands 
clinched. 

"Jim  Randolph,"  he  went  on,  "as  I  lis- 
tened to  that  girl's  story  of  the  terrible  cruelty 
and  devilish  treachery  practised  by  the  human 


36      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

hyenas  you  and  I  associate  with,  human 
hyenas  who,  when  in  search  of  dirty  dol- 
lars— the  only  thing  they  know  anything 
about — put  to  shame  the  real  beasts  of  the 
wilds — when  I  listened,  I  tell  you  that  I 
felt  it  would  not  give  me  a  twinge  of  con- 
science to  put  a  ball  through  that  slick  scoun- 
drel Reinhart.  Yes,  and  that  hired  cur 
of  his,  too,  who  prostitutes  a  good  family 
name  and  position,  and  an  inherited  ability 
the  Almighty  intended  for  more  honest  uses 
than  the  trapping  of  victims  on  whose  purses 
his  gutter-born  master  has  set  lecherous 
eyes.  And,  Jim,  as  I  listened,  a  troop  of 
old  friends  invaded  my  memory — friends  whom 
I  have  not  seen  since  before  I  went  to  Har- 
vard, friends  with  whom  I  spent  many  a 
happy  hour  in  my  old  Virginia  home,  friends 
born  of  my  imagination,  stalwart,  rugged 
crusaders,  who  carried  the  sword  and  the 
cross  and  the  banner  inscribed  'For  Honour 
and  for  God/  Old  friends  who  would 
troop  into  my  boyhood  and  trumpet,  'Bob, 
don't  forget,  when  you're  a  man,  that  the 
goal  is  honour,  and  the  code:  Do  unto  your 
neighbour  as  you  would  have  your  neigh- 
bour do  unto  you.  Don't  forget  that  millions 
is  the  crest  of  the  groundlings.'  And,  Jim, 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      37 

I  thought  my  friends  looked  at  me  with  re- 
proachful eyes,  as  they  said,  'You  are  well 
on  the  road,  Bob  Brownley,  and  in  time 
your  heart  and  soul  will  bear  the  hall-mark 
of  the  snaky  S  on  the  two  upright  bars, 
and  you  will  be  but  a  frenzied  fellow  in  the 
Dirty  Dollar  army.'  Jim,  Jim  Randolph, 
as  I  listened  to  that  agonising  tale  of  the 
changing  of  that  girl's  heaven  to  hell,  I  did 
not  see  that  halo  you  and  I  have  thought 
surrounded  the  sign  of  Randolph  &  Ran- 
dolph. I  did  not  see  it,  Jim,  but  I  did  see 
myself,  and  I  didn't  feel  proud  of  the 
picture.  My  God,  Jim,  is  it  possible  you 
and  I  have  joined  the  nobility  of  Dirty  Dollars  ? 
Is  it  possible  we  are  leaving  trails  along  our 
life's  path  like  that  Reinhart  left  through 
the  home  of  these  Virginians,  such  trails  as 
this  girl  has  shown  me?'* 

Bob  had  worked  himself  into  a  state  of 
frenzy.  I  had  never  seen  him  so  excited 
as  when  he  stood  in  front  of  me  and  al- 
most shouted  this  fierce  self-denunciation. 

"For  heaven's  sake,  Bob,  pull  yourself 
together,"  I  urged.  'The  captain  on  the 
bridge  there  is  staring  at  you  wild-eyed,  and 
Katherine  will  be  up  here  to  see  what  has 
happened.  Now,  be  a  good  fellow,  and  let 


38      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

us  talk  this  thing  over  in  a  sensible  way. 
At  the  gait  you  are  going  we  can  do  nothing 
to  help  out  your  friends.  Besides,  what 
is  there  for  you  and  me  to  take  ourselves 
to  task  for  ?  We  are  no  wreckers  and  none 
of  our  dollars  is  stained  with  Frenzied  Fin- 
ance. My  father,  as  you  know,  despised 
Reinhart  and  his  sort  as  much  as  we  do. 
Be  yourself.  What  does  this  girl  want  you 
to  do  ?  If  it  is  anything  in  reason,  call  it 
done,  for  you  know  there  is  nothing  I  won't 
do  for  you  at  the  asking." 

Bob's  hysteria  oozed.  He  dropped  on 
the  rail-seat  at  my  side. 

"I  know  it,  Jim,  I  know  it,  and  you  must 
forgive  me.  The  fact,  is,  Beulah  Sands 's 
story  has  aroused  a  lot  of  thoughts  I  have 
been  a-sticking  down  cellar  late  years,  for, 
to  tell  the  truth,  I  have  some  nasty  twinges 
of  conscience  every  now  and  then  when  I 
get  to  thinking  of  this  dollar  game  of  ours.*' 

I  saw  that  the  impulsive  blood  was  fast 
cooling,  and  that  it  would  only  be  a  question 
of  minutes  until  Bob  would  be  his  clear- 
headed self. 

"Now,  what  is  it  she  wants  you  to  do?" 
I  persisted.  "Is  it  a  case  of  money,  of  our 
trying  to  tide  her  father  over?" 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      39 

"Nothing  of  that  kind,  Jim.  You  don't 
know  the  proud  Virginia  blood.  Neither 
that  girl  nor  her  father  would  accept  money 
help  from  any  one.  They  would  go  to 
smash  and  the  grave  first." 

He  paused  and  then  continued  impressively : 

"This  is  how  she  puts  it.  She  and  her 
father  have  raked  together  her  different 
legacies  and  turned  them  into  cash,  a  matter 
of  sixty  thousand  dollars,  and  she  got  him 
to  consent  to  let  her  come  up  here  to  see  if 
during  the  next  six  months  she  might  not,  in 
a  few  desperate  plunges  in  the  market,  run 
it  up  to  enough  to  at  least  regain  the  trust 
funds.  Yes,  I  know  it  is  a  wild  idea.  I 
told  her  so  at  the  beginning,  but  there  was 
no  need;  she  knew  it,  for  she  is  not  only 
bright,  but  she  has  the  best  idea  of  business 
I  ever  knew  a  woman  to  have.  But  it  is 
their  only  chance,  Jim,  and  while  I  listened 
to  her  argument  I  came  around  to  her  way 
of  thinking." 

"But  how  did  she  happen  to  come  to  you 
with  this  extraordinary  scheme?"  I  inter- 
rupted. 

"It's  this  way — her  father,  who  knew 
Randolph  &  Randolph  through  your  father's 
handling  of  the  Seaboard's  affairs,  learned 


40      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

of  my  connection  with  the  house,  and  gave 
her  a  letter,  asking  me  to  do  what  I  could  to 
help  his  daughter  carry  out  her  plans.  She 
wants  to  get  a  position  with  us,  if  possible, 
in  some  sort  of  capacity,  secretary,  con- 
fidential clerk,  or,  as  she  puts  it,  any  sort  of 
place  that  will  justify  her  being  in  the  office. 
She  tells  me  she  is  good  at  shorthand,  on 
the  machine,  or  at  correspondence,  also 
that  she  has  been  a  contributor  to  the  maga- 
zines. If  this  can  be  arranged,  she  says 
she  will  on  her  own  responsibility  select 
the  time  and  the  stock,  and  hurl  the  last 
of  the  Sands  fortune  at  the  market,  and,  Jim, 
she  is  game.  The  blow  seems  to  have  turned 
this  child  into  a  wonderfully  nervy  creature, 
and,  old  man,  I  am  beginning  to  have  a 
feeling  that  perhaps  the  cards  may  come  so 
she  will  win  the  judge  out.  You  and  I  know 
where  less  than  sixty  thousand  has  been 
run  up  to  millions  more  than  once,  and  that, 
too,  without  the  aid  she  will  have,  for  I'll 
surely  do  all  I  can  to  help  her  steer  this  last 
chance  into  spongy  places." 

Bob  in  his  enthusiasm  had  completely 
lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  he  was  indorsing 
a  project  that  but  a  moment  previously  he 
had  pronounced  insane,  and  with  a  start 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      41 

I  realised  what  this  sudden  transformation 
betokened.  Inevitably,  if  the  project  he  out- 
lined were  carried  out,  Bob  and  the  beauti- 
ful Southern  girl  would  be  thrown  into 
close  association  with  each  other,  and  fur- 
ther acquaintance  could  only  deepen  the 
startling  influence  Beulah  Sands  had  already 
won  over  my  ordinarily  sane  and  cool-headed 
comrade.  As  I  looked  at  my  friend,  burn- 
ing with  an  ardour  as  unaccustomed  as  it 
was  impulsive,  I  felt  a  tug  at  my  heart- 
strings at  thought  of  the  sudden  cross-road- 
ing  of  his  life's  highway.  But  I,  too,  was 
filled  with  the  glamour  of  this  girl's  won- 
drous beauty,  and  her  terrible  predicament 
appealed  to  me  almost  as  strongly  as  it  had 
to  Bob.  So,  although  I  knew  it  would  be 
fatal  to  any  chance  of  his  weighing  the  mat- 
ter by  common  sense,  I  burst  out: 

"Bob,  I  don't  blame  you  for  falling  in 
with  the  girl's  plans.  If  I  were  in  your 
shoes,  I  should  too." 

Tears  came  to  Bob's  eyes  as  he  grabbed 
my  hand  and  said: 

"Jim,  how  can  I  ever  repay  you  for  all 
the  good  things  you  have  done  for  me — 
how  can  I!" 

It  was  no  time  to  give  way  to  emotional 


42      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

outbursts,  and  while  Bob  was  getting  his 
grip  on  himself,  I  went  on: 

"Come  along  down  to  earth  now,  Bob; 
let  us  look  at  this  thing  squarely.  You  and 
I,  with  our  position  in  the  market,  can  do 
lots  of  things  to  help  run  that  sixty  thousand 
to  higher  figures,  but  six  months  is  a  short 
time  and  a  million  or  two  a  world  of  money." 

"She  knows  that,"  he  said,  "and  the 
time  is  much  shorter  and  the  road  to  go  much 
longer  than  you  figure,"  he  replied.  "This 
girl  is  as  high-tensioned  as  the  E  string  on  a 
Stradivarius,  and  she  declares  she  will  have 
no  charity  tips  or  unusual  favours  from  us  or 
any  one  else.  But  let  us  not  talk  about 
that  now  or  we'll  get  discouraged.  Let's 
do  as  she  says  and  trust  to  God  for  the  out- 
come. Are  you  willing,  Jim,  to  take  her 
into  the  office  as  a  sort  of  confidential  secretary  ? 
If  you  will,  I'll  take  charge  of  her  account, 
and  together  we  will  do  all  that  two  men  can 
for  her  and  her  father." 


CHAPTER  II 

PHE  following  week  saw  Miss  Sands,  of 
Virginia,  private  secretary  to  the  head  of 
Randolph  &  Randolph,  established  in  a 
little  office  between  mine  and  Bob's,  She 
had  not  been  there  a  day  before  we  knew 
she  was  a  worker.  She  spent  the  hours 
going  over  reports  and  analysing  financial 
statements,  showing  a  sagacity  extraordinary 
in  so  young  a  person.  She  explained  her 
knowledge  of  figures  by  the  hand-work  she 
had  done  for  the  judge,  all  of  whose  accounts 
she  had  kept.  Bob  and  I  saw  that  she  was 
bent  on  smothering  her  memory  in  that  anti- 
dote for  all  ills  of  heart  and  soul — work. 
Her  office  life  was  simplicity  itself.  She 
spoke  to  no  one  except  Bob,  save  in  con- 
nection with  such  business  matters  of  the 
firm's  as  I  might  send  her  by  one  of  the 
clerks  to  attend  to.  To  the  others  in  the 
banking-house  she  was  just  an  unconven- 
tional young  literary  woman  whose  high 
social  connections  had  gained  her  this  oppor- 
tunity of  getting  at  the  secrets  of  finance, 

43 


44      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

from  actual  experience,  for  use  in  forthcom- 
ing novels.  It  had  got  abroad  that  she  was 
the  writer  of  great  distinction  who,  under  a 
nom  de  plume,  had  recently  made  quite  a 
dent  in  the  world's  literary  shell — a  sugges- 
tion that  I  rightly  guessed  was  one  of  Bob's 
delicate  ways  of  smoothing  out  her  path. 
I  had  tried  in  every  way  to  make  things 
easy  for  her,  but  it  was  impossible  for  me  to 
draw  her  out  in  talk,  and  finally  I  gave  it  up. 
Had  it  not  been  that  every  time  I  passed  her 
office  door  I  was  compelled  by  the  fascina- 
tion which  I  had  first  felt,  and  which,  in- 
stead of  diminishing,  had  increased  with  her 
reticence,  to  look  in  at  the  quiet  figure  with  the 
downcast  eyes,  working  away  at  her  desk 
as  though  her  life  depended  on  never  missing 
a  second,  I  should  not  have  known  she  was 
in  the  building.  My  wife,  at  my  sugges- 
tion, had  tried  to  induce  her  to  visit  us;  in 
fact,  after  I  let  her  into  just  enough  of  Beulah 
Sands's  story  so  that  she  could  see  things 
on  a  true  slant,  she  had  decided  to  try  to 
bring  her  to  our  house  to  live.  But  though 
the  girl  was  sweetly  gentle  in  her  apprecia- 
tion of  Kate's  thoughtful  attentions,  in  her 
simple  way  she  made  us  both  feel  that  our 
efforts  would  be  for  naught,  that  her  position 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      45 

must  be  the  same  as  that  of  any  other 
clerk  in  the  office.  We  both  finally  left  her 
to  herself.  Bob  explained  to  me,  some  three 
weeks  after  she  came  to  the  office,  that  she 
received  no  visitors  at  her  home,  a  hotel  on 
a  quiet  uptown  street,  and  that  even  he  had 
never  had  permission  to  call  upon  her  there. 
But  from  the  day  she  came  to  occupy 
her  desk  in  our  office,  Bob  was  a  changed 
man,  whether  for  better  or  for  worse  neither 
Kate  nor  I  could  decide.  His  old  bounding 
elasticity  was  gone,  and  with  it  his  rol- 
licking laugh.  He  was  now  a  man  where 
before  he  had  been  a  boy,  a  man  with  a  bur- 
den. Even  if  I  had  not  heard  Beulah  Sands's 
story,  I  should  have  guessed  that  Bob  was 
staggering  under  a  strange  load.  While 
before,  from  the  close  of  the  Stock  Exchange 
until  its  opening  the  next  morning,  he  was, 
as  Kate  was  fond  of  putting  it,  always  ready 
to  fill  in  for  anything  from  chaperon  to  nurse, 
always  open  for  any  lark  we  planned,  from 
a  Bohemian  dinner  to  the  opera,  now  weeks 
went  by  without  our  seeing  him  at  our  house. 
In  the  office  it  used  to  be  a  saying  that  out- 
side gong-strikes,  Bob  Brownley  did  not  know 
he  was  in  the  stock  business.  Formerly 
every  clerk  knew  when  Bob  came  or  went, 


46       FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

for  it  was  with  a  rush,  a  shout,  a  laugh, 
and  a  bang  of  doors;  and  on  the  floor  of  the 
Stock  Exchange  no  man  played  so  many 
pranks,  or  filled  his  orders  with  so  much 
jolly  good-nature  and  hilarious  boisterous- 
ness.  But  from  the  day  the  Virginian  girl 
crossed  his  path,  Bob  Brownley  was  a  man 
who  was  thinking,  thinking,  thinking  all 
the  time.  It  was  only  with  an  effort  that  he 
would  keep  his  eyes  on  whomever  he  was 
talking  with  long  enough  to  take  in  what 
was  said,  and  if  the  saying  occupied  much 
time  it  would  be  apparent  to  the  talker  that 
Bob  was  off  in  the  clouds.  All  his  friends 
and  associates  remarked  the  change,  but  I 
alone,  except  perhaps  Kate,  had  any  idea 
of  the  cause.  I  knew  that  two  million  dol- 
lars and  the  coming  New  Year  were  hurdling 
like  kangaroos  over  Bob's  mental  rails  and 
ditches,  though  I  did  not  know  it  from  any- 
thing he  told  me,  for  after  that  talk  on  the 
upper  deck  of  the  Tribesman  he  had  shut 
up  like  a  clam. 

He  did  not  exactly  shun  me,  but  showed 
me  in  many  ways  that  he  had  entered  into 
a  new  world,  in  which  he  desired  to  be  alone. 
That  Beulah  Sands's  plight  had  roused  into 
intense  activity  all  the  latent  romance  of 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      47 

my  friend's  nature,  did  not  surprise  me. 
I  foresaw  from  the  first  that  Bob  would  fall 
head  over  heels  in  love  with  this  beautiful, 
sorrow-laden  girl,  and  it  was  soon  obvious 
that  the  long-delayed  shaft  had  planted  its 
point  in  the  innermost  depths  of  his  being. 
His  was  more  than  love;  a  fervid  idolatry 
now  had  possession  of  his  soul,  mind,  and 
body.  Yet  its  outward  manifestations  were 
the  opposite  of  what  one  would  have  looked 
for  in  this  gay  and  optimistic  Southerner. 
It  was  rather  priest- like  worship,  a  calm 
imperturbability  that  nothing  seemed  to  dis- 
tract or  upset,  at  least  in  the  presence  of  the 
goddess  who  was  its  object.  Every  morn- 
ing he  would  pass  through  my  office  headed 
straight  for  the  little  room  she  occupied  as 
if  it  were  his  one  objective  point  of  the  day, 
but  once  he  heard  his  own  "Good  morn- 
ing, Miss  Sands,"  he  seemed  to  round  to, 
and  while  in  her  presence  was  the  Bob  Brown- 
ley  of  old.  He  would  be  in  and  out  all  day 
on  any  and  every  pretext,  always  entering 
with  an  undisguised  eagerness,  leaving  with 
a  slow,  dreamy  reluctance.  That  he  never 
saw  her  outside  the  office,  I  am  sure,  for  she 
said  good-night  to  him  when  he  or  she  left 
for  the  day  with  the  same  don't-come-with-me 


48      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

dignity  that  she  exhibited  to  all  the  rest 
of  us.  I  had  not  attempted  to  say  a  word 
to  Bob  about  his  feeling  for  Beulah  Sands,  nor 
had  he  ever  brought  up  the  subject  to  me. 
On  the  contrary,  he  studiously  avoided  it. 

Three  months  of  the  six  had  now  passed, 
and  with  each  day  I  thought  I  noted  an  in- 
creasing anxiety  in  Bob.  He  had  opened 
a  special  account  for  Miss  Sands  on  the 
books  of  the  house  in  his  name  as  agent, 
with  a  credit  of  sixty  thousand  dollars,  and 
we  both  watched  it  with  a  painful  tenseness 
of  scrutiny.  It  had  grown  by  uneven  jerks, 
until  the  balance  on  October  1st  was  almost 
four  hundred  thousand  dollars.  On  some 
of  the  trades  Bob  had  consulted  me,  and  on 
others,  two  in  particular  where  he  closed  up 
after  a  few  days'  operations  with  nearly 
two  hundred  thousand  dollars  profit,  I  did 
not  even  know  what  the  trading  was  based 
on  until  the  stocks  had  been  sold.  Then 
he  said: 

"Jim,  that  little  lady  from  Virginia  can 
give  us  a  big  handicap  and  play  us  to  a 
standstill  at  our  own  game.  She  told  me 
to  buy  all  the  Burlington  and  Sugar  her 
account  would  stand,  and  did  not  even  ask 
for  my  opinion.  In  both  cases  I  thought 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      49 

the  operations  were  more  the  result  of  a 
wakeful  night  and  an  I-must-do-something 
decision  than  anything  else,  and  I  tackled 
both  with  a  shiver;  but  when  she  told  me 
to  sell  them  out  at  a  time  I  thought  they 
looked  like  going  higher  and  the  next  day 
they  slumped,  I  could  not  help  thinking  about 
the  destiny  that  shapes  our  ends." 

On  my  part  I  tried  to  help.  On  one 
occasion,  without  consulting  her,  I  put  her 
account  in  on  a  sure  thing  underwriting, 
wherein  she  stood  to  make  a  profit  of  a  quarter 
of  a  million,  but  when  Bob  told  her  what 
I  had  done,  she  insisted  with  great  dignity 
that  her  name  be  withdrawn.  After  that 
neither  of  us  dared  help  her  to  any  short 
cuts.  Bob  was  deeply  impressed  by  her 
principles,  and,  commenting  on  them,  said: 
"  Jim,  if  all  Wall  Street  had  a  code  similar 
to  Beulah  Sands's  to  hew  to  in  their  gambles, 
ours  would  be  a  fairer  and  more  manly 
game,  and  many  of  the  multi-millionaires 
would  be  clerking,  while  a  lot  of  the  hand- 
to-mouth  traders  would  come  downtown  in 
a  new  auto  every  day  in  the  week.  She  does 
not  believe  in  stock-gambling.  She  has  worked 
it  out  that  every  dollar  one  man  makes, 
another  loses;  that  the  one  who  makes 


50      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

gives  nothing  in  return  for  what  he  gets 
away  with;  and  that  the  other  fellow's  loss 
makes  him  and  his  as  miserable  as  would 
robbery  to  the  same  amount.  Yet  she  realises 
that  she  must  get  back  those  millions  stolen 
from  her  father  and  is  willing  to  smother 
her  conscience  to  attempt  it,  provided  she 
takes  no  unfair  advantage  of  the  other  players. 
The  other  day  she  said  to  me,  'I  have  de- 
cided, because  of  my  duty  to  my  father,  to 
put  away  my  prejudice  against  gambling, 
but  no  duty  to  him  or  to  any  one  can  justify 
me  in  playing  with  marked  cards.'  Jim, 
there  is  food  for  reflection  for  you  and  me, 
don't  you  think  so?" 

I  did  not  argue  it  with  him,  for,  after 
that  Saturday's  outburst,  I  had  made  up 
my  mind  to  avoid  stirring  Bob  up  unneces- 
sarily. Also,  I  had  to  admit  to  myself 
that  the  things  he  had  then  said  had  raised 
some  uncomfortable  thoughts  in  me,  thoughts 
that  made  me  glance  less  confidently  now 
and  then  at  the  old  sign  of  Randolph  & 
Randolph  and  at  the  big  ledger  which  showed 
that  I,  an  ordinary  citizen  of  a  free  coun- 
try, was  the  absolute  possessor  of  more 
money  than  a  hundred  thousand  of  my  fel- 
low beings  together  could  accumulate  in 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      51 

a  lifetime,  although  each  one  had  worked 
harder,  longer,  more  conscientiously,  and 
with  perhaps  more  ability  than  I. 

As  to  how  Beulah  Sands's  code  had  af- 
fected my  friend,  I  was  ignorant.  For  the 
first  time  in  our  association  I  was  com- 
pletely in  the  dark  as  to  what  he  was  doing 
stockwise.  Up  to  that  Saturday  I  was  the 
first  to  whom  he  would  rush  for  congratula- 
tions when  he  struck  it  rich  over  others  on 
the  exchange,  and  he  invariably  sought  me 
for  consolation  when  the  boys  "upper-cut 
him  hard,"  as  he  would  put  it.  Now  he 
never  said  a  word  about  his  trading.  I 
saw  that  his  account  with  the  house  was  in- 
active, that  his  balance  was  about  the  same 
as  before  Miss  Sands's  advent,  and  I  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  he  was  resting  on 
his  oars  and  giving  his  undivided  attention 
to  her  account  and  the  execution  of  his 
commissions.  His  handling  of  the  business 
of  the  house  showed  no  change.  He  still 
was  the  best  broker  on  the  floor.  How- 
ever, knowing  Bob  as  I  did,  I  could  not  get 
it  out  of  my  mind  that  his  brain  was  running 
like  a  mill-race  in  search  of  some  successful 
solution  to  the  tremendous  problem  that  must 
be  solved  in  the  next  three  months. 


52      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Shortly  after  the  October  1st  statements 
had  been  sent  out,  Bob  dropped  in  on  Kate 
and  me  one  night.  After  she  had  retired 
and  we  had  lit  our  cigars  in  the  library  he 
said: 

"Jim,  I  want  some  of  that  old-fashioned 
advice  of  yours.  Sugar  is  selling  at  110, 
and  it  is  worth  it;  in  fact  it  is  cheap.  The 
stock  is  well  distributed  among  investors, 
not  much  of  it  floating  round  'the  Street.' 
A  good,  big  buying  movement,  well  handled, 
would  jump  it  to  175  and  keep  it  there. 
Am  I  sound?" 

I  agreed  with  him. 

"All  right.  Now  what  reason  is  there 
for  a  good,  big,  stiff  uplift?  That  tariff 
bill  is  up  at  Washington.  If  it  goes  through, 
Sugar  will  be  cheaper  at  175  than  at 
110." 

Again  I  agreed. 

'  'Standard  Oil*  and  the  Sugar  people 
know  whether  it  is  going  through,  for  they 
control  the  Senate  and  the  House  and  can 
induce  the  President  to  be  good.  What 
do  you  say  to  that  ?" 

"O.  K,"  I  answered. 

"No  question  about  it,   is  there?" 

"Not  the  slightest." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      53 

"  Right  again.  When  26  Broadway*  gives 
the  secret  order  to  the  Washington  boss  and 
he  passes  it  out  to  the  grafters,  there  will 
be  a  quiet  accumulation  of  the  stock,  won't 
there?" 

"You've  got  that  right,  Bob." 

"And  the  man  who  first  knows  when 
Washington  begins  to  take  on  Sugar  is  the 
man  who  should  load  up  quick  and  rush 
it  up  to  a  high  level.  If  he  does  it  quickly, 
the  stockholders,  who  now  have  it,  will  get 
a  juicy  slice  of  the  ripening  melon,  a  slice 
that  otherwise  would  go  to  those  greedy 
hypocrites  at  Washington,  who  are  always 
publicly  proclaiming  that  they  are  there  to 
serve  their  fellow  countrymen,  but  who  never 
tire  of  expressing  themselves  to  their  brokers 
as  not  being  in  politics  for  their  health." 

"So  far,   good   reasoning,"   I   commented. 

"Jim,  the  man  who  first  knows  when  the 
Senators  and  Congressmen  and  members 
of  the  Cabinet  begin  to  buy  Sugar,  is  the 
man  who  can  kill  four  birds  with  one  stone: 
Win  back  a  part  of  Judge  Sands 's  stolen 
fortune;  increase  his  own  pile  against  the 
first  of  January,  when,  if  the  little  Virginian 


*  "  26  Broadway  "  is  the  Wall  Street  figure  of  speech  for  "  Standard  Oil, " 
which  has  its  home  there. 


54      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

lady  is  short  a  few  hundred  thousand  of  the 
necessary  amount,  he  could,  if  he  found  a 
way  to  induce  her  to  accept  it,  supply  the  defi- 
ciency; fatten  up  a  good  friend's  bank  account 
a  million  or  so,  and  do  a  right  good  turn  for  the 
stockholders  who  are  about  to  be,  for  the  hun- 
dredth time,  bled  out  of  profit  rightfully  theirs." 

Bob  was  afire  with  enthusiasm,  the  first 
I  had  seen  him  show  for  three  months.  Seeing 
that  I  had  followed  him  without  objection 
so  far,  he  continued: 

"Well,  Jim,  I  know  the  Washington  buy- 
ing has  begun.  All  I  know  I  have  dug  out 
for  myself  and  am  free  to  use  it  any  way  I 
choose.  I  have  gone  over  the  deal  with 
Beulah  Sands,  and  we  have  decided  to  plunge. 
She  has  a  balance  of  about  four  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  and  I'm  going  to  spread 
it  thin.  I  am  going  to  buy  her  20,000  shares 
and  to  take  on  10,000  for  myself.  If  you 
went  in  for  20,000  more,  it  would  give  me 
a  wide  sea  to  sail  in.  I  know  you  never 
speculate,  Jim,  for  the  house,  but  I  thought 
you  might  in  this  case  go  in  personally." 

"Don't  say  anything  more,  Bob,"  I  re- 
plied. "This  time  the  rule  goes  by  the 
board.  But  I  will  do  better:  I'll  put  up  a 
million  and  you  can  go  as  high  as  70,000 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      55 

for  me.  That  will  give  you  a  buying  power 
of  100,000,  and  I  want  you  to  use  my  last 
50,000  shares  as  a  lifter." 

I  had  never  speculated  in  a  share  of  stock 
since  I  entered  the  firm  of  Randolph  & 
Randolph,  and  on  general,  special,  and  every 
other  principle  was  opposed  to  stock  gambling, 
but  I  saw  how  Bob  had  worked  it  out,  and 
that  to  make  the  deal  sure  it  was  necessary 
for  him  to  have  a  good  reserve  buying  power 
to  fall  back  on  if,  after  he  got  started,  the 
"System"  masters,  whose  game  he  was  but- 
ting in  to  and  whose  plans  he  might  upset 
should  try  to  shake  down  the  price  to  drive 
him  out  of  their  preserves.  Bob  knew  how 
I  looked  at  his  proposed  deal  and  ordinarily 
would  not  have  allowed  me  to  have  the 
short  end  of  it,  but  so  changed  had  he  be- 
come in  his  anxiety  to  make  that  money 
for  the  Virginians  that  he  grabbed  at  my 
acceptance, 

"Thank  you,  Jim,"  he  said  fervently, 
and  he  continued:  "Of  course,  I  see  what's 
going  through  your  head,  but  I'll  accept 
the  favour,  for  the  deal  is  bound  to  be  suc- 
cessful. I  know  your  reason  for  coming 
in  is  just  to  help  out,  and  that  you  won't 
feel  badly  because  your  last  50,000  shares 


56      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

will  be  used  more  as  a  guarantee  for  the  deal's 
success  than  for  profit.  And  Miss  Sands 
could  not  object  to  the  part  you  play,  as 
she  did  at  the  underwriting,  for  you  will 
get  a  big  profit  anyway." 

Next  day  Sugar  was  lively  on  the  Ex- 
change. Bob  bought  all  in  sight  and  handled 
the  buying  in  a  masterly  way.  When  the 
closing  gong  struck,  Beulah  Sands  had  20,000 
shares,  which  averaged  her  115;  Bob  and 
I  had  30,000  at  an  average  of  125,  and  the 
stock  had  closed  132  bid  and  in  big  demand. 
Miss  Sands's  20,000  showed  $340,000  profit, 
while  our  30,000  showed  $210,000  at  the 
closing  price.  All  the  houses  with  Washing- 
ton wires  were  wildly  scrambling  for  Sugar 
as  soon  as  it  began  to  jump.  And  it  cer- 
tainly looked  as  though  the  shares  were 
good  for  the  figures  set  for  them  by  Bob, 
$175,  at  which  price  the  Sands's  profits 
would  be  $1,200,000.  Bob  was  beside  him- 
self with  joy.  He  dined  with  Kate  and  me, 
and  as  I  watched  him  my  heart  almost  stopped 
beating  at  the  thought — "if  anything  should 
happen  to  upset  his  plans!"  His  happiness 
was  pathetic  to  witness.  He  was  like  a 
child.  He  threw  away  all  the  reserve  of 
the  past  three  months  and  laughed  and 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      57 

was  grave  by  turns.  After  dinner,  as  we 
sat  in  the  library  over  our  coffee,  he  leaned 
over  to  my  wife  and  said : 

"Katherine  Randolph,  you  and  Jim  don't 
know  what  misery  I  have  been  in  for  three 
months,  and  now — will  to-morrow  never  come, 
so  I  may  get  into  the  whirl  and  clean  up 
this  deal  and  send  that  girl  back  to  her  father 
with  the  money!  I  wanted  her  to  telegraph 
the  judge  that  things  looked  like  she  would 
win  out  and  bring  back  the  relief,  but  she 
would  not  hear  of  it.  She  is  a  marvellous 
woman.  She  has  not  turned  a  hair  to-day. 
I  don't  think  her  pulse  is  up  an  eighth  to- 
night. She  has  not  sent  home  a  word 
of  encouragement  since  she  has  been  here, 
more  than  to  tell  her  father  she  is  doing 
well  with  her  stories.  It  seems  they  both 
agreed  that  the  only  way  to  work  the  thing 
out  was  'whole  hog  or  none,'  and  that  she 
was  to  say  nothing  until  she  could  herself 
bring  the  word  'saved'  or  'lost.'  I  don't 
know  but  she  is  right.  She  says  if  she  should 
raise  her  father's  hopes,  and  then  be  com- 
pelled to  dash  them,  the  effect  would  be 
fatal." 

Bob  rushed  the  talk  along,  flitting  from 
one  point  to  another,  but  invariably  returning 


58      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

to  Beulah  Sands  and  to-morrow  and  its 
saving  profits.  Finally,  he  got  to  a  pitch 
where  it  seemed  as  though  he  must  take  off 
the  lid,  and  before  Kate  or  I  realised 
what  was  coming  he  placed  himself  in  front 
of  us  and  said: 

"Jim,  Kate,  I  cannot  go  into  to-morrow 
without  telling  you  something  that  neither 
of  you  suspect.  I  must  tell  some  one,  now 
that  everything  is  coming  out  right  and 
that  Beulah  is  to  be  saved;  and  whom  can 
I  tell  but  you,  who  have  been  everything  to 
me? — I  love  Beulah  Sands,  surely,  deeply, 
with  every  bit  of  me.  I  worship  her,  I  tell 
you,  and  to-morrow,  to-morrow  if  this  deal 
comes  out  as  it  must  come,  and  I  can  put 
$1,500,000  into  her  hands  and  send  her 
home  to  her  father,  then,  then,  I  will  tell  her 
I  love  her,  and  Jim,  Kate,  if  she'll  marry 
me,  good-bye,  good-bye  to  this  hell  of  dollar- 
hunting,  good-bye  to  such  miserv  ^s  I  have 
been  in  for  three  months,  and  home,  a  Vir- 
ginia home,  for  Beulah  and  me."  He  sank 
into  a  chair  and  tears  rolled  down  his  cheeks 
Poor,  poor  Bob,  strong  as  a  lion  in  adversity, 
hysterical  as  a  woman  with  victory  in  sight. 

The  next  day  Sugar  opened  with  a  wild 
rush:  "25,000  shares  from  140  to  152." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      59 

That  is  the  way  it  came  on  the  tape,  which 
meant  that  the  crowd  around  the  Sugar- 
pole  was  a  mob  and  that  the  transactions  were 
so  heavy,  quick,  and  tangled  that  no  one 
could  tell  to  a  certainty  just  what  the  first 
or  opening  price  was;  but  after  the  first  lull, 
after  the  gong,  there  were  officially  reported 
transactions  aggregating  25,000  shares  and 
at  prices  varying  from  140  to  152.  I  was 
over  on  the  floor  to  see  the  scramble,  for  it 
was  noised  about  long  before  ten  o'clock 
that  Sugar  would  open  wild,  and  then,  too, 
I  wanted  to  be  handy  if  Bob  should  need 
any  quick  advice. 

A  minute  before  the  gong  struck,  there  were 
three  hundred  men  jammed  around  the  Sugar- 
pole;  men  with  set,  determined  faces;  men 
with  their  coats  buttoned  tight  and  shoulders 
thrown  back  for  the  rush  to  which,  by  com- 
parison, that  of  a  football  team  is  child's 
play.  Every  man  in  that  crowd  was  a  picked 
man,  picked  for  what  was  coming.  Each 
felt  that  upon  his  individual  powers  to  keep 
a  clear  head,  to  shout  loudest,  to  forget 
nothing,  to  keep  his  feet,  and  to  stay  as  near 
the  centre  of  the  crowd  as  possible,  depended 
his  "floor  honour,"  perhaps  his  fortune,  or, 
what  was  more  to  him,  his  client's  fortune. 


60     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Nearly  every  man  of  them  was  a  college 
graduate  who  had  won  his  spurs  at  athletics 
or  a  seasoned  floor  man  whose  training 
had  been  even  more  severe  than  that  of  the 
college  campus.  When  it  is  known  before 
the  opening  of  the  Exchange  that  there  are 
to  be  "things  doing"  in  a  certain  stock, 
it  is  the  rule  to  send  only  the  picked  floor 
men  into  the  crowd.  There  may  be  a 
fortune  to  make  or  to  lose  in  a  minute  or  a 
sliver  of  a  minute.  For  instance,  the  man 
who  that  morning  was  able  to  snatch  the 
first  5,000  shares  sold  at  140  could  have 
resold  them  a  few  minutes  afterward  at  152 
and  secured  $60,000  profit.  And  the  man 
who  was  sent  into  the  crowd  by  his  client 
to  sell  5,000  shares  at  the  "opening"  and 
who  got  but  140,  when  the  price  would  be 
152  by  the  time  he  reported  to  his  customer, 
was  a  man  to  be  pitied.  Again,  the  trader 
who  the  night  before  had  decided  that  Sugar 
had  gone  up  too  fast,  and  who  had  "shorted" 
(that  is,  sold  what  he  did  not  have,  with  the 
intention  of  repurchasing  at  a  lower  price 
than  he  sold  it  for)  5,000  shares  at  140  and 
who,  finding  himself  in  that  surging  mob 
with  Sugar  selling  at  152,  could  only  get 
out  by  taking  a  loss  of  $60,000,  or  by  taking 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      61 

another  chance  of  later  paying  162 — such  a 
trader  was  also  to  be  pitied. 

No  one  who  scanned  the  crowd  that  morn- 
ing would  have  believed  that  the  calm,  set 
face  on  that  erect  Indian  figure,  occupy- 
ing the  very  centre  of  that  horde  of  gam- 
blers who  were  only  awaiting  the  ringing 
clang  of  the  gong  to  hurl  themselves  like 
madmen  at  each  other,  was  the  hysterical 
man  who  the  night  before  was  wildly  pray- 
ing for  this  moment.  Nearly  every  man 
in  that  crowd  was  calm,  but  Bob  Brown- 
ley  was  the  calmest  of  them  all.  It's  the 
Exchange  code  that  at  any  cost  of  heart  or 
nerve-tear  a  man  must  retain  good  form 
until  the  gong  strikes.  Then,  that  he  must 
be  as  near  the  uncaged  tiger  as  human  mind 
and  body  can  be  made.  Only  I  realised 
what  volcano  raged  inside  my  chum's  bosom. 
If  any  other  man  of  the  crowd  had  known, 
Bob's  chances  of  success  would  have  been 
on  par  with  a  Canadian  canoeist  short- 
cutting  Niagara  for  Buffalo.  Nine-tenths  of 
the  Stock  Exchange  game  is  not  letting  your 
left  brain-lobe  know  what  race  your  right  is  in 
until  the  winning  numbers  and  the  also-rans 
are  on  the  board.  If  one  of  those  three  hun- 
dred chain-lightning  thinkers  or  any  of  their 


62      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

ten  thousand  alert  associates  knew  in  advance 
the  intentions  of  a  fellow  broker,  the  word 
would  sweep  through  that  crowd  with  the 
sureness  of  uncorked  ether,  and  the  other  two 
hundred  and  ninty  nine,  at  gong-strike,  would 
be  at  each  others'  throats  for  his  vitals,  and  be- 
fore he  knew  the  game  had  started  would  have 
his  bones  picked  to  a  vulture-finish  cleanness. 
Suddenly,  as  I  watched  the  scene,  there 
rang  through  the  great  hall  the  first  sharp 
stroke  of  the  gong.  There  were  no  echoes 
heard  that  morning.  The  metallic  voice  was 
yet  shaping  its  command  to  "at  'em,  you 
fiends"  when  from  three  hundred  throats 
burst  the  wild  sound  of  the  Stock  Exchange  yell. 
No  other  sound  in  any  of  the  open  or  hidden 
places  of  all  nature  duplicates  the  yell  of  a 
great  Stock  Exchange  at  an  exciting  open- 
ing. It  not  only  fills  and  refills  space,  for 
the  volume  is  terrific,  but  it  has  an  indi- 
viduality all  its  own,  coming  from  the  in- 
cisive "take-mine-I've-got  yours,"  from  the 
aggressive,  almost  arrogant  "you-can't-you- 
won't-have-your-way,"  the  confident  "by- 
heaven-I-will"  individual  notes  that  enter 
into  the  whole,  as  they  blend  with  the  shrill 
scream  of  triumph  and  the  die-away  note 
of  disappointment,  when  the  floor  men  realise 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      63 

their  success  or  their  failure.     I  picked  Bob's 

magnificently  resonant  voice  from  the  mass 

—"40  for    any  part    of    10,000    Sugar."     It 

was  this  daring  bid  that  struck  terror  to  the 

bears    and    filled    the    bulls*    with    a    frenzy 

of  encouragement.     Again  it  rang  out — "45 

for  any  part  of  25,000";  and   a   third   time 

-"50  for  any  part  of  50,000." 

The  great  crowd  was  surging  all  over  the 
room.  Hats  were  smashed  and  coats  were 
being  stripped  from  their  owners'  backs  as 
though  made  of  paper,  and  now  and  then 
a  particularly  frantic  buyer  or  seller  would 
be  borne  to  the  floor  by  the  impetus  of  those 
who  sought  to  fill  his  bid  or  grab  his  offer. 
Through  all  the  wild  whirl,  straight  and 
erect  and  commanding  was  the  form  of 
Bob,  his  face  cold  and  expressionless  as  an 
iceberg.  In  five  minutes  the  human  mass 
had  worked  back  to  the  Sugar-pole  and 
there  was  the  inevitable  lull  while  its  mem- 
bers "verified." 

I  could  see  by  the  few  entries  Bob  was 
making  on  his  pad  that  he  had  been  com- 
pelled to  buy  but  little.  This  meant  that 
his  campaign  was  working  smoothly,  that 


*  Those  who  seek  to  depress  the  price  of  a  stock  are  known  as  bears,  and 
those  who  oppose  them  by  trying  to  raise  the  price  are  bulls. 


64      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

he  was  driving  the  market  up  by  merely 
bidding,  and  that  he  had  the  greater  part 
of  my  50,000  yet  unbought,  which  inturn 
meant  he  could  continue  to  push  up  the 
price,  or  in  the  event  of  his  opponents' 
attempting  to  run  it  down,  he  would  be 
under  the  market  with  big  supporting  orders. 

Suddenly  the  lull  was  broken.  Bob's  voice 
rang  out  again — "153  for  any  part  of  10,000 
Sugar."  Again  the  gamblers  closed  in  and 
for  another  five  minutes  the  opening  scene 
was  duplicated,  with  only  a  shade  less  fierce- 
ness. After  ten  minutes'  mad  trading  a 
mighty  burst  of  sound  told  that  Sugar  was 
160  bid.  Then  Bob  worked  his  way  out  of 
the  crowd,  and  passing  by  me  fairly  hissed, 
"By  heaven,  Jim,  I've  got  them  cinched!" 

I  went  back  to  the  office.  In  a  few  minutes 
Bob  without  a  word  strode  through  my 
office  and  into  the  little  room  occupied  by 
Beulah  Sands.  He  closed  the  door  behind 
him,  a  thing  that  he  had  never  done  before. 
It  was  only  a  minute  till  he  opened  it  and 
called  to  me.  In  his  eyes  was  a  strange 
look,  a  look  that  came  from  the  blending  of 
two  mighty  passions,  one  joy,  the  other  I 
could  not  make  out,  unless  it  was  that  soft 
one,  which  suppressed  love,  emerging  from 


terrible  uncertainty,  generates  in  deep  natures 
and  which  usually  finds  vent  in  tears.  Beulah 
Sands  was  a  study.  Her  heart  was  evi- 
dently swaying  and  tugging  with  the  news 
Bob  had  brought  her.  She  must  have  seen 
the  nearness  of  release  from  the  torture 
that  had  been  filling  her  soul  during  the  past 
three  months,  and  yet  such  was  the  remark- 
able self-control  of  the  woman,  such  her 
noble  courage,  that  she  refused  to  show  any 
outward  sign  of  her  feelings.  She  was  the 
reserved,  dignified  girl  I  had  ever  seen  her. 
"Jim,  Miss  Sands  and  I  thought  it  best 
that  we  should  have  a  little  match  up  at  this 
stage  of  our  deal,"  Bob  began..  "I  want 
to  know  if  you  both  agree  with  me  on  adhering 
to  the  original  plans  to  close  out  at  175.  I 
never  felt  surer  of  my  ground  than  in  this 
deal.  The  stock  is  163  on  the  tape  right 
now."  He  glanced  at  the  white  paper  rib- 
bon whose  every  foot  on  certain  days 
spells  Heaven  or  Hell  to  countless  mortals,  as 
it  rolled  out  of  the  ticker  in  the  corner  of 
the  office.  'Yes,  there  she  goes  again— 
3},  4,  4J  and  1,200  at  a  half.  There  is  a 
tremendous  demand  from  all  quarters.  Wash- 
ington's buying  is  unlimited;  the  commis- 
sion-houses are  tumbling  over  one  another 


66      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

to  get  aboard  and  the  shorts  are  scared  to 
a  paralysed  muteness.  They  don't  know 
whether  to  jump  in  and  cover  or  to  stand 
their  present  hands,  but  they  have  no 
pluck  to  fight  the  rise,  that  is  certain.  The 
news  bureaus  have  just  published  the  story 
that  I  am  buying  for  Randolph  &  Randolph, 
and  they  for  the  insiders;  that  the  new  tariff 
is  as  good  as  passed;  and  that  at  the  direc- 
tors' meeting  to-morrow  the  Sugar  dividend 
will  be  increased,  and  that  it  is  agreed  on  all 
sides  she  won't  stop  going  until  she  crosses 
200.  I've  been  obliged  to  take  on  only 
18,000  of  your  50,000,  and  at  present  prices 
there  is  over  two  hundred  thousand  profit 
in  them.  I  think  I  could  go  back  there  and 
in  thirty  minutes  have  it  to  180.  Then 
if  I  rested  on  it  until  about  one  o'clock  and 
threw  myself  at  it  for  real  fireworks  up  to 
the  close,  I  could,  under  cover  of  them, 
let  slip  about  half  our  purchases,  and  to- 
morrow open  her  with  a  whirl  and  let  go 
the  balance.  If  I'm  in  luck  I'll  average 
180-185  for  the  whole  bunch,  but  I'll  be 
satisfied  if  I  get  an  average  of  175,  which 
would  allow  me  to  sell  it  on  a  dropping  scale 
to  160." 

I   agreed   that   his   campaign   was   perfect. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      67 

and  Beulah  Sands  said  in  her  usual  quiet 
way,  "It  is  entirely  in  your  hands,  Mr. 
Brownley.  I  don't  see  how  any  advice  from 
us  can  help," 

Bob  went  back  to  the  Exchange  and  I 
into  my  office.  Bob  had  been  right  again. 
In  ten  minutes  the  tape  began  to  scream 
Sugar.  With  enormous  transactions  it  ran 
up  in  fifteen  minutes  to  188,  in  three  more 
it  dropped  to  181,  and  then  steadily  mounted 
to  185J,  dulled  up,  and  was  healthy  steady. 
Presently  Bob  was  back  and  we  sat  down 
again. 

"I've  bought  20,000  more  for  you,  Jim, 
on  that  bulge.  I've  38,000  in  all  of  the 
last  50,000,  which  leaves  me  12,000  reserve. 
The  average  is  'way  under  75,  and  there 
must  be  $400,000  for  you  in  it  now  and  a 
strong  $1,400,000  in  Miss  Sands's  20,000, 
and  $1,800,000  in  our  30,000.  They  say  it's 
bad  business  to  count  chickens  in  the  shell, 
but  ours  are  tapping  so  hard  to  get  out  I  can't 
help  doing  it  this  once.  I'm  going  to  keep 
away  from  the  floor  for  an  hour  or  so,  then 
I  will  go  over  and  wind  it  up  and — good 
God,  Beulah — Miss  Sands — are  you  ill  ?" 

The  girl's  face  was  ashen  gray  and  she 
seemed  to  be  gasping  for  breath.  I  rushed 


68      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

for  some  water  while  Bob  seized  both  her 
hands,  but  in  an  instant  the  blood  came  to 
her  cheeks  with  a  rush  and  she  said,  "I  was 
dizzy  for  a  moment.  It  must  have  been 
the  thought  of  taking  $1,800,000  back  to 
father  that  upset  me.  With  that  amount 
father  could  make  good  all  the  trust  funds, 
and  have  back  enough  of  his  own  fortune 
to  make  us  seem,  after  what  we  have  been 
going  through,  richer  than  we  were  before. 
Pardon  me,  Mr.  Randolph,  won't  you,  when 
I  say — God  bless  you  and  every  one  whom 
you  hold  dear,  God  bless  you  ?  What  could 
I  or  my  father  have  done  but  for  you  and 
Mr.  Brownley?" 

She  turned  her  big  eyes  full  upon  Bob, 
filled  with  a  light  such  as  can  come  only  to 
a  woman's  eyes,  only  to  a  woman  before 
whom,  as  she  stands  on  the  brink  of  hell, 
suddenly  looms  her  heaven. 

Sharp  and  shrill  rang  Bob's  Exchange 
telephone.  The  ring  seemed  shriller;  it  cer- 
tainly was  longer  than  usual.  Bob  jumped 
for  the  receiver. 


CHAPTER  III 

TTE  LISTENED  a  moment,  then  an- 
swered,  "Stand  on  it  at  80  for 
12,000  shares.  I  will  be  there  in  a  sec- 
ond." He  dropped  the  receiver.  "Jim, 
we  have  struck  a  snag.  Arthur  Perkins, 
whom  I  left  on  guard  at  the  pole,  says  Barry 
Conant  has  just  jumped  in  and  supplied 
all  the  bids.  He  has  it  down  to  81  and  is 
offering  it  in  5,000  blocks  and  is  aggressive. 
I  must  get  there  quick,"  and  he  shot  out  of 
the  office. 

I  sprang  for  Bob's  telephone:  "Perkins, 
quick!"  "What  are  they  doing,  Perkins?" 
I  asked  a  moment  later. 

"Conant  has  almost  filled  me  up.  He 
seems  to  have  a  hogshead  of  it  on  tap,"  he 
answered. 

"Buy  50,000  shares,  5,000  each  point 
down;  and  anything  unfilled,  give  to  Bob 
when  he  gets  there.  He  is  on  the  way." 

I  shut  off,  and  turned  to  Miss  Sands : 
'This   is   no   time  to  stand  on  ceremony, 
Miss  Sands.     Barry  Conant  is  Camemeyer's 

69 


70      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

and  'Standard  Oil's'  head  broker.  His  being 
on  the  floor  means  mischief.  He  never  goes 
into  a  big  whirl  personally  unless  they  are 
out  for  blood.  Bob  has  exhausted  his  buy- 
ing power,  and  though  I  tell  you  frankly 
that  I  never  speculate,  don't  believe  in  specula- 
tion and  am  in  this  deal  only  for  Bob — and 
for  you — I  swear  I  don't  intend  to  let  them 
wipe  the  floor  with  him  without  at  least 
making  them  swallow  some  of  the  dust  they 
kick  up.  Please  don't  object  to  my  helping 
out,  Miss  Sands.  Ordinarily  I  would  defer 
to  your  wishes,  but  I  love  Bob  Brownley 
only  second  to  my  wife,  and  I  have  money 
enough  to  warrant  a  plunge  in  stock.  If 
they  should  turn  Bob  over  in  this  deal,  he- 
well,  they're  not  going  to,  if  I  can  prevent 
it,"  and  I  started  for  the  Exchange  on  the 
run. 

When  I  got  there  the  scene  beggared 
description.  That  of  the  morning  was  tame 
in  comparison.  A  bull  market,  however  ter- 
rific, always  is  tame  beside  a  bear  crash. 
In  the  few  moments  it  took  me  to  get  to  the 
floor,  the  battle  had  started.  The  greater 
part  of  the  Exchange  membership  was  in 
a  dense  mob  wedged  against  the  rail 
behind  the  Sugar-pole.  I  could  not  have 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      71 

got  within  yards  of  the  centre  of  that  crowd 
of  men,  fast  becoming  panic-stricken,  if 
the  fate  of  nations  had  depended  on  my 
errand.  I  had  witnessed  such  a  scene  be- 
fore. It  represented  a  certain  phase  of  Stock- 
Exchange-gambling  procedure,  where  one  man 
apparently  has  every  other  man  on  the  floor 
against  him.  I  understood:  Bob  against 
them  all — he  trying  to  stay  the  onrushing 
current  of  dropping  prices;  they  bent  on 
keeping  the  sluice-gates  open.  He  was  backed 
up  against  the  rail — not  the  Bob  of  the  morn- 
ing; not  a  vestige  of  that  cold,  brain-nerve- 
and-body-in-hand  gambler  remained.  His  hat 
was  gone,  his  collar  torn  and  hanging  over 
his  shoulder.  His  coat  and  waistcoat  were 
ripped  open,  showing  the  full  length  of  his 
white  shirt-front,  and  his  eyes  were  fairly 
mad.  Bob  was  no  longer  a  human  being, 
but  a  monarch  of  the  forest  at  bay,  with  the 
hunter  in  front  of  him,  and  closing  in  upon 
him,  in  a  great  half -circle,  the  pack  of  har- 
riers, all  gnashing  their  teeth,  baring  their 
fangs,  and  howling  for  blood.  The  hunter 
directly  facing  Bob,  was  Barry  Conant — 
very  slight,  very  short,  a  marvellously  com- 
pact, handsome,  miniature  man,  with  a  fas- 
cinating face,  dark  olive  in  tint,  lighted  by 


72      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

a  pair  of  sparkling  black  eyes  and  framed 
in  jet-black  hair;  a  black  mustache  was  parted 
over  white  teeth,  which,  when  he  was  stalk- 
ing his  game,  looked  like  those  of  a  wolf. 
An  interesting  man  at  all  times  was  this 
Barry  Conant,  and  he  had  been  on  more 
and  fiercer  battle-fields  than  any  other  half- 
score  members  combined.  The  scene  was 
a  rare  one  for  a  student  of  animalised  men. 
While  every  other  man  in  the  crowd  was 
at  a  high  tension  of  excitement,  Barry  Conant 
was  as  calm  as  though  standing  in  the  centre 
of  a  ten-acre  daisy-field  cutting  off  the  help- 
less flowers'  heads  with  every  swing  of  his 
arm.  Switching  stock-gamblers  into  eternity 
had  grown  to  be  a  pastime  to  Barry  Conant. 
Here  was  Bob  thundering  with  terrific  em- 
phasis "78  for  5,000,"  "77  for  5,000,"  "75 
for  5,000,"  "74  for  5,000,"  "73  for  5,000," 
"72  for  5,000,"  seemingly  expecting  through 
sheer  power  of  voice  to  crush  his  opponent 
into  silence.  But  with  the  regularity  of  a 
trip-hammer  Barry  Conant's  right  hand, 
raised  in  unhurried  gesture,  and  his  clear 
calm  "Sold"  met  Bob's  every  retreating  bid. 
It  was  a  battle  royal — a  king  on  one  side,  a 
Richelieu  on  the  other.  Though  there  was 
frantic  buying  and  selling  all  around  these 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      73 

two  generals,  the  trading  was  gauged  by  the 
trend  of  their  battle.  All  knew  that  if  Bob 
should  be  beaten  down  by  this  concentrated 
modern  finance  devil,  a  panic  would  ensue 
and  Sugar  would  go  none  could  say  how  low. 
But  if  Bob  should  play  him  to  a  standstill 
by  exhausting  his  selling  power,  Sugar  would 
quickly  soar  to  even  higher  figures  than 
before.  It  was  known  that  Barry  Conant's 
usual  order  from  his  clients,  the  "System'* 
masters,  for  such  an  occasion  as  the  pres- 
ent was  "Break  the  price  at  any  cost."  On 
the  other  hand,  every  one  knew  that  Ran- 
dolph &  Randolph  were  usually  behind 
Bob's  big  operations;  this  was  evidently 
one  of  his  biggest;  and  every  man  there 
knew  that  Randolph  &  Randolph  were  sel- 
dom backed  down  by  any  force. 

As  Bob  made  his  bid  "72  for  5,000," 
and  got  it,  I  saw  a  quick  flash  of  pain  shoot 
across  his  face,  and  realised  that  it  probably 
meant  he  was  nearing  the  end  of  my  last 
order.  I  sized  it  up  that  there  was  deviltry 
of  more  than  usual  significance  behind  this 
selling  movement;  that  Barry  Conant  must 
have  unlimited  orders  to  sell  and  smash. 
My  final  order  of  fifty  thousand  brought  our 
total  up  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 


74      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

shares,  a  large  amount  for  even  Randolph 
&  Randolph  to  buy  of  a  stock  selling  at  nearly 
$200  a  share.  I  then  and  there  decided  that 
whatever  happened  I  would  go  no  further. 
Just  then  Bob's  wild  eye  caught  mine,  and 
there  was  in  it  a  piteous  appeal,  such  an 
appeal  as  one  sees  in  the  eye  of  the  wounded 
doe  when  she  gives  up  her  attempt  to  swim 
to  shore  and  waits  the  coming  of  the  pursuing 
hunter's  canoe.  I  sadly  signaled  that  I 
was  through.  As  Bob  caught  the  sign,  he 
threw  his  head  back  and  bellowed  a  deep, 
hoarse  "70  for  10,000."  I  knew  then  that 
he  had  already  bought  forty  thousand,  and 
that  this  was  the  last-ditch  stand.  Barry 
Conant  must  have  caught  the  meaning  too. 
Instantly,  like  a  revolver  report,  came  his 
"Sold!"  Then  the  compact,  miniature  mass 
of  human  springs  and  wires,  which  had  until 
now  been  held  in  perfect  control,  suddenly 
burst  from  its  clamps,  and  Barry  Conant 
was  the  fiend  his  Wall  Street  reputation 
pictured  him.  His  five  feet  five  inches  seemed 
to  loom  to  the  height  of  a  giant.  His  arms, 
with  their  fate-pointing  fingers,  rose  and 
fell  with  bewildering  rapidity  as  his  piercing 
voice  rang  out— "5,000  at  69,  68,  65,"  "10,000 
at  63,"  "25,000  at  60."  Pandemonium 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      75 

reigned.  Every  man  in  the  crowd  seemed 
to  have  the  capital  stock  of  the  Sugar  Trust 
to  sell,  and  at  any  price.  A  score  seemed 
to  be  bent  on  selling  as  low  as  possible  in- 
stead of  for  as  much  as  they  could  get.  These 
were  the  shorts  who  had  been  punished  the 
day  before  by  Bob's  uplift. 

Poor  Bob,  he  was  forgotten!  An  instant 
after  he  made  his  last  effort  he  was  the  dead 
cock  in  the  pit.  Frenzied  gamblers  of  the 
Stock  Exchange  have  no  more  use  for  the 
dead  cocks  than  have  Mexicans  for  the  real 
birds  when  they  get  the  fatal  gaff.  The 
day  after  the  contest,  or  even  that  same 
night  at  Delmonico's  and  the  clubs,  these 
men  would  moan  for  poor  Bob;  Barry  Con- 
ant's  moan  would  be  the  loudest  of  them 
all,  and,  what  is  more,  it  would  be  sincere. 
But  on  battle  day  away  to  the  dump  with 
the  fallen  bird,  the  bird  that  could  not  win! 
I  saw  a  look  of  deep,  terrible  agony  spread 
over  Bob's  face;  and  then  in  a  flash  he  was 
the  Bob  Brownley  who  I  always  boasted 
had  the  courage  and  the  brain  to  do  the 
right  thing  in  all  circumstances.  To  the 
astonishment  of  every  man  in  the  crowd  he 
let  loose  one  wild  yell,  a  cross  between  the 
war-whoop  of  an  Indian  and  the  bay  of  a 


76      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

deep-lunged  hound  regaining  a  lost  scent. 
Then  he  began  to  throw  over  Sugar  stock, 
right  and  left,  in  big  and  little  amounts. 
He  slaughtered  the  price,  under-cutting  Barry 
Conant's  every  offer  and  filling  every  bid 
For  twenty  minutes  he  was  a  madman, 
then  he  stopped.  Sugar  was  falling  rapidly 
to  the  price  it  finally  reached,  90,  and  the 
panic  was  in  full  swing,  but  panics  seemed 
now  to  have  no  interest  for  Bob.  He  pushed 
his  way  through  the  crowd  and,  joining  me, 
said:  "Jim,  forgive  me.  I  have  dragged 
you  into  an  enormous  loss,  have  ruined  Beulah 
Sands,  her  father,  and  myself.  I  think  at 
the  last  moment  I  did  the  only  thing  possible. 
I  threw  over  the  150,000  shares  and  so  cut 
off  some  of  our  loss.  Let  us  go  to  the  office 
and  see  where  we  stand.'*  He  was  strangely, 
unnaturally  calm  after  that  heart-crushing, 
nerve-tearing  day.  I  tried  to  tell  him  how 
I  admired  his  cool  nerve  and  pluck  in  about- 
facing  and  doing  the  only  thing  there  was 
left  to  do;  to  tell  him  that  required  more 
real  courage  and  level-headedness  than  all 
the  rest  of  the  day's  doings;  but  he  stopped 
me: 

"Jim,   don't  talk  to   me.     My  conceit   is 
gone.     I    have    learned    my    lesson    to-day. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      77 

My  plans  were  all  right,  and  sound,  but  poor 
fool  that  I  was,  I  did  not  take  into  considera- 
tion the  loaded  dice  of  the  master  thieves. 
I  knew  what  they  could  do,  have  seen  them 
scores  of  times,  as  you  have,  at  their  slaugh- 
ter; seen  them  crush  out  the  hearts  of  other 
men  just  as  good  as  you  or  I ;  seen  them 
take  them  out  and  skin  and  quarter-slice 
them,  unmindful  of  the  agony  of  those  who 
were  dear  to  and  dependent  on  their  owners, 
but  it  never  seemed  to  strike  me  home.  It 
was  not  my  heart,  and  somehow,  I  looked 
at  it  as  a  part  of  the  game  and  let  it  go  at 
that.  To-day  I  know  what  it  means  to  be 
put  on  the  chopping-block  of  the  *  System* 
butchers.  I  know  what  it  is  to  see  my  heart 
and  the  heart  of  one  I  love — and  yours,  too, 
Jim — systematically  skewered  to  those  of  the 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  victims  who 
have  gone  before.  Jim,  we  must  be  three 
millions  losers,  and  the  men  who  have  our 
money  have  so  many,  many  millions  that 
they  can't  live  long  enough  even  to  thumb 
them  over.  Men  who  will  use  our  money 
on  the  gambling-table,  at  the  race-tracks, 
squander  it  on  stage  harlots,  or  in  turning 
their  wives  and  daughters  or  their  neigh- 
bours' wives  and  daughters  into  worse  than 


78      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

stage  harlots.  Men,  Jim,  who  are  not  fit, 
measured  by  any  standard  of  decency,  to 
walk  the  same  earth  as  you  and  Judge  Sands. 
Men  whose  painted  pets  pollute  the  very 
air  that  such  as  Beulah  Sands  must  breathe. 
I've  learned  my  lesson  to-day.  I  thought 
I  knew  the  game  of  finance,  but  I'm  sud- 
denly awakened  to  a  realisation  of  the  dense 
ignorance  I  wallowed  in.  Jim,  but  for  the 
loading  of  the  dice,  I  should  now  have  been 
taking  Beulah  Sands  to  her  father  with  the 
money  that  the  hellish  *  System'  stole  from 
him.  Later  I  should  have  taken  her  to  the 
altar,  and  after,  who  knows  but  that  I  should 
have  had  the  happiest  home  and  family 
in  all  the  world,  and  lived  as  her  people  and 
mine  have  lived  for  generations,  honest, 
God-fearing,  law-abiding,  neighbour-loving 
men  and  women,  and  then  died  as  men 
should  die?  But  now,  Jim,  I  see  a  black, 
awful  picture.  No,  I'm  not  morbid,  I'm 
going  to  make  a  heroic  effort  to  put  the  pic- 
ture out  of  sight;  but  I'm  afraid,  Jim,  I'm 
afraid." 

He  stopped  as  we  pulled  up  on  the  side- 
walk in  front  of  Randolph  &  Randolph's 
•office.  "Here  it  is  on  the  bulletin.  See 
what  did  the  trick,  Jim.  They  held  the 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH       79 

Sugar  meeting  last  night  instead  of  waiting 
till  to-morrow,  and  cut  the  dividend  instead 
of  increasing  it.  The  world  won't  know 
it  until  to-morrow.  Then  they  will  know 
it,  then  they  will  know  it.  They  will  read 
it  in  the  headlines  of  the  papers — a  few 
suicides,  a  few  defaulters,  a  few  new  con- 
victs, an  unclaimed  corpse  or  two  at  the 
morgue;  a  few  innocent  girls,  whose  fathers' 
fortunes  have  gone  to  swell  Camemeyer's 
and  'Standard  Oil's'  already  uncountable 
gold,  turned  into  streetwalkers;  a  few  new 
palaces  on  Fifth  Avenue,  and  a  few  new 
libraries  given  to  communities  that  formerly 
took  pride  in  building  them  from  their  hon- 
estly earned  savings.  A  report  or  two  of 
record-breaking  diamond  sales  by  Tiffany 
to  the  kings  and  czars  of  dollar  royalty, 
then  front-page  news  stories  of  clawing,  maul- 
ing, and  hair-pulling  wrangles  among  the 
stage  harlots  for  the  possession  of  these 
diamonds.  They  were  not  quite  sure  that 
the  dividend  cut  alone  would  do  the  trick, 
and  they  were  taking  no  chances,  these  mighty 
warriors  of  the  'System,'  so  their  hireling 
Senate  committee  held  a  session  last  night 
and  unanimously  reported  to  put  sugar  on 
the  free  list.  The  people  will  read  that  in 


80      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

the  morning,  and  probably  the  day  after 
they'll  be  told  that  the  committee  held  an- 
other session  to-night  and  unanimously  re- 
ported to  take  it  off  the  free  list.  By  that 
time  these  honourable  statesmen  will  have 
loaded  up  with  the  stock  that  you  and  I  and 
Beulah  Sands  sold,  and  that  other  poor  devils 
will  slaughter  to-morrow  after  reading  their 
morning  papers." 

Bob's  bitterness  was  terrible.  My  heart 
was  torn  as  I  listened.  He  stalked  through 
the  office  and  into  that  of  Beulah  Sands. 
I  followed.  She  was  at  her  desk,  and  when 
she  looked  up,  her  great  eyes  opened  in 
wonderment  as  they  took  in  Bob,  his  grim, 
set  face,  the  defiant,  sullen  desperation  of 
the  big  brown  eyes,  the  dishevelled  hair  and 
clothes.  For  an  instant  she  stood  as  one 
who  had  seen  an  apparition. 

"Look  me  over,  Beulah  Sands,"  he  said, 
"look  me  over  to  your  heart's  content,  for 
you  may  never  again  see  the  fool  of  fools 
in  all  the  world,  the  fool  who  thought  him- 
self competent  to  cope  with  men  of  brains, 
with  men  who  really  know  how  to  play  the 
game  of  dollars  as  it  is  played  in  this  Chris- 
tian age.  Don't  ask  me  not  to  call  you 
Beulah;  that  what  I  tried  to  do  was  for 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      81 

you  is  the  one  streak  of  light  in  all  this  black 
hell.  Beulah,  Beulah,  we  are  ruined,  you, 
your  father,  and  I,  ruined,  and  I'm  the  fool 
who  did  it." 

She  rose  from  her  desk  with  all  the  quiet, 
calm  dignity  that  we  had  been  admiring  for 
three  months,  and  stood  facing  Bob.  She  did 
not  seem  to  see  me;  she  saw  nothing  but 
the  man  who  had  gone  out  that  morning 
the  personification  of  hope,  who  now  stood 
before  her  the  picture  of  black  despair,  and 
she  must  have  thought,  "It  was  all  for  me." 
Suddenly  she  took  the  lapels  of  his  torn 
coat  in  either  hand.  She  had  to  reach  up 
to  do  it,  this  winsome  little  Virginia  lady. 
With  her  big  calm  blue  eyes  looking  straight 
into  his,  she  said: 

"Bob." 

That  was  all,  but  the  word  seemed  to 
change  the  very  atmosphere  in  the  room. 
The  look  of  desperation  faded  from  Bob's 
face,  and  as  though  the  words  had  sprung 
the  hidden  catch  to  the  doors  of  his  store- 
house of  pent-up  misery,  his  eyes  filled 
with  hot,  blinding  tears.  His  great  chest 
was  convulsed  with  sobs.  Again — clear,  calm, 
fearless,  and  tender,  came  the  one  syllable, 
"Bob."  And  at  that  Bob's  self-control  slipped 


82      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

the  leash.  With  a  hoarse  cry,  he  threw  his 
arms  around  her  and  crushed  her  to  his 
breast.  The  sacredness  of  the  scene  made 
me  feel  like  an  intruder,  and  I  started  to 
leave  the  room.  But  in  a  moment  Beulah 
Sands  was  her  usual  self  and,  turning  to  me, 
she  said:  "Mr.  Randolph,  please  forget  what 
you  have  seen.  For  an  instant,  as  I  saw 
Mr.  Brownley's  awful  misery,  I  thought  of 
nothing  but  what  he  had  done  for  me,  what 
he  had  tried  to  do  for  my  father,  what  a 
penalty  he  has  paid.  From  what  you  said 
when  you  left  and  the  fact  that  I  got  no 
word  from  either  of  you,  I  feared  the  worst 
and  did  not  dare  look  at  the  tape;  I  simply 
waited  and  hoped  and — prayed.  Yes,  I 
prayed  as  my  mother  taught  me  I  should 
pray  whenever  I  was  helpless  and  could  do 
nothing  myself.  And  I  felt  that  God  would 
not  let  the  noble  work  of  two  such  men  be 
overthrown  by  those  you  were  battling  with. 
In  the  midst  of  a  calmness  that  I  took  for 
a  good  omen,  you  came.  Can  you  blame 
me  for  forgetting  myself?  Mr.  Brownley," 
the  voice  was  now  calm  and  self -controlled, 
"tell  me  what  you  have  done.  Where  do 
we  stand?"  "There  is  little  to  tell,"  Bob 
answered.  "Camemeyer  and  'Standard  Oil' 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      83 

have  taken  me  into  camp  as  they  would  take 
a  stuck  pig.  They  have  made  a  monkey- 
fied  ass  out  of  me,  and  we  are  ruined,  and  I 
have  caused  Mr.  Randolph  a  heavy  loss. 
Roughly,  I  figure  that  of  your  four  hundred 
thousand  capital  and  the  million  four  hun- 
dred thousand  profit  you  had  this  morning, 
only  your  capital  remains." 

Wishing  to  spare  Bob,  I  interrupted  and 
myself  gave  the  girl  briefly  the  details  of 
what  had  happened.  She  listened  intently 
and  seemed  to  take  in  all  the  trickery  of  the 
"System"  masters;  seemed  to  see  just  what 
it  meant  to  us  and  to  her.  But  she  made 
no  comment,  showed  by  no  outward  sign 
that  she  suffered.  As  soon  as  I  was  through 
she  turned  to  Bob,  who  had  stood  with  his 
eyes  fastened  upon  her  face,  as  though  some- 
where out  of  its  soft  beauty  must  come  an 
assurance  that  this  was  all  a  bad  dream. 

"Mr.  Brownley,"  she  said,  "let  us  figure 
up  just  where  we  stand,  so  that  we  may 
know  what  to  do  to  recoup.  You  have 
said  so  many  times,  since  I  have  been  here, 
that  Wall  Street  is  magic  land;  that  no  man 
may  tell  twenty-four  hours  ahead  what  will 
happen  to  him.  You  have  said  it  so  many 
times  that  I  believe  it.  We  know  that  this 


84     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

morning  we  were  at  the  goal,  that  we  were 
millions  ahead,  and  all  from  twenty-four 
hours'  effort.  We  have  yet  almost  three 
months  left,  and  I  do  not  see  why  we  have 
not  just  as  much  chance  as  we  had  day  be- 
fore yesterday.  Yes,  and  more,  because  we 
know  more  now.  Next  time  we  will  include 
the  dividend  cuts  and  the  Senate  duplicity 
in  our  figuring." 

We  both  dumbly  stared  in  wondering 
admiration  at  this  marvellous  woman.  Was 
it  possible  that  a  girl  could  have  such  nerve, 
such  courage?  Or  had  woman's  hope,  so 
persistent  where  her  loved  ones  are  concerned, 
made  Beulah  Sands  blind  to  the  awfulness 
of  the  situation  ?  As  I  looked  at  her  I  could 
not  doubt  that  she  fully  realised  our  position, 
that  she  was  really  suffering  more  than 
either  of  us,  that  she  was  only  acting  to  ease 
Bob's  anguish.  Bob  brought  out  his  memo- 
randa, and  in  half  an  hour  we  had  the  figures. 
The  total  loss  was  nearly  three  millions. 
As  Beulah  Sands's  20,000  shares  had  cost 
less  than  ours  and  Bob  figured  to  leave  her 
capital  of  $400,000  intact,  we  felt  some 
comfort.  Beulah  Sands  had  watched  the 
figuring  with  the  keenness  of  an  expert,  and 
when  Bob  announced  the  final  figures,  which 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      85 

showed  that  she  still  had  what  she  started 
with,  she  drew  the  sheet  containing  the 
totals  to  her.  "I  was  willing  to  accept 
your  assistance,"  she  said,  "when  the  deal 
promised  a  profit  to  all  of  us,  because  I 
appreciated  your  goodness  and  knew  how 
much  it  would  hurt  your  feelings  if  I  were 
churlish  about  the  division;  but  now  that 
we  all  lose  I  must  stand  my  fair  share;  I 
must."  She  said  this  in  a  way  that  we 
both  knew  precluded  the  possibility  of  argu- 
ment. **We  owned  together  150,000  shares. 
I  was  to  have  had  the  profits  on  20,000 
shares.  Our  total  loss  is  $2,775,000,  of  which 
I  must  bear  my  just  proportion.  Mr.  Brown- 
ley,  you  will  see  that  $370,000  is  charged  to 
my  account.  I  shall  have  $30,000  left.  If 
our  cause  is  as  just  as  we  think,  God  in  his 
goodness  will  make  this  ample  for  our  pur- 
poses." 

Though  Bob  and  I  were  in  despair  at  her 
determination  to  strip  herself  of  what  Bob 
had  worked  so  hard  to  accumulate,  we  could 
not  help  feeling  a  reverence  for  her  faith 
and  her  sturdy  independence.  She  now 
showed  us  in  her  delicate  way  that  she  wished 
to  be  alone;  as  we  went  she  held  out  her 
hand  to  Bob.  "Mr.  Brownley,  please,  for 


86     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

the  sake  of  the  work  we  have  to  do,  look 
on  the  bright  side  of  this  calamity,  for  it  has 
a  bright  side.  You  wanted  me  to  send 
word  to  my  father  that  we  were  about  to 
grasp  victory.  Think  if  we  had  sent  it — 
then  you  will  know  that  God  is  good,  even 
when  we  think  he  is  chastening  us  beyond 
endurance." 

Bob  took  me  into  his  office.  "Jim,  you 
see  what  a  woman  can  do,  and  we  are  taught 
women  are  the  weaker  sex.  Now  listen  to 
what  you  must  do.  Accept  my  notes  for 
the  whole  loss,  less  one  hundred  thousand 
which  I  have  to  my  credit,  and  which  I  will 
pay  on  account.  I  won't  listen  to  any  ob- 
jection. The  deal  was  mine;  you  came  in 
only  to  help  us  out,  and  I  ought  never  to 
have  tempted  you.  If  I  remain  in  my  pres- 
ent busted  condition,  the  notes  will  be  blank 
paper.  Therefore  you  do  me  no  harm  in 
taking  them.  If  I  should  strike  it  rich,  I 
should  never  feel  like  a  man  until  I  made 
up  the  loss." 

It  was  no  use  arguing  with  him  in  his 
inflexible  mood,  so  I  took  his  demand  notes 
for  $2,405,000.  I  begged  him  to  go  home 
with  me  to  dinner,  but  he  insisted  that  he 
could  not  face  my  wife  with  his  last  night's 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      87 

break  still  fresh  in  her  mind.  Next  day  he 
did  not  turn  up.  Along  in  the  afternoon 
I  received  a  telegram  from  him,  saying  that 
he  was  on  his  way  to  Virginia,  that  he  needed 
a  rest  and  would  be  back  in  a  week.  I  was 
worried,  nervous.  It  takes  until  the  next 
day  and  the  day  after,  and  the  week  after 
that,  to  get  down  to  the  deepest  misery  of 
an  upset  such  as  we  had  been  through.  I 
did  not  feel  easy  with  Bob  out  of  sight  while 
he  was  sounding  for  a  new  footing.  I  went 
to  Beulah  Sands  in  hope  we  might  talk  over 
the  affair,  but  when  I  told  her  that  Bob  was 
to  be  gone  for  a  week  and  that  I  was  uneasy, 
she  said  in  her  calm,  confident  manner: 
"I  don't  think  there  is  anything  to  worry 
about,  Mr.  Randolph.  Mr.  Brownley  is  too 
much  of  a  man  to  allow  an  affair  of  dollars 
to  do  anything  more  than  annoy  him.  He 
will  be  back  all  the  better  for  his  rest."  She 
dropped  her  long  lashes  in  a  this- conversa- 
tion-is- closed  way  that  we  had  come  to 
know  meant  going  time. 


CHAPTER  IV 

'T^HE  following  week  Bob  returned  to  the 
office.  He  had  not  changed,  and 
yet  he  had  changed  greatly.  Rest  had 
apparently  done  much  for  him.  His 
colour  was  good,  his  step  elastic  as  of  old, 
and  his  head  was  thrown  back  as  if  he  were 
buckled  up  for  the  fray  and  wanted  all 
to  know  it.  Yet  there  was  something 
in  the  eye,  in  the  setness  of  the  jaw,  in  the 
hair-trigger  calm,  yet  fiercely  savage  grip 
in  which  he  closed  his  strong  hands  on  the 
arms  of  his  chair,  that  told  me  more  plainly 
than  words  that  this  was  not  the  optimistic, 
soft-hearted  Bob  Brownley  I  had  known 
and  loved.  I  could  not  help  feeling  that  if 
I  had  been  a  leader  of  the  Russian  terrorists, 
and  this  man  who  now  sat  before  me  had  come 
to  my  ken  when  I  was  selecting  bomb-throwers, 
I  should  have  seized  upon  him  of  all 
men  as  the  one  to  stalk  the  Czar  or  his 
marked  minions.  Surely  the  iron  that  had 
entered  Bob's  soul  a  week  before  had  af- 
fected his  whole  being.  I  think  Beulah 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      89 

Sands  had  some  such  thoughts.  For  I  saw 
a  shadow  of  perplexity  cross  her  broad, 
low  forehead  after  her  first  meeting  with 
him,  a  shadow  that  had  not  been  there  before. 
For  days  after  Bob's  return  I  saw  little  of 
him.  I  think  Beulah  Sands  saw  less.  Dur- 
ing Stock  Exchange  hours  he  spent  most  of 
his  time  on  the  floor,  but  he  executed  few 
of  our  orders.  He  merely  looked  them  over 
and  handed  them  out  to  his  assistants.  As 
far  as  I  could  learn,  he  spent  much  of  his 
time  there  yesterdaying  through  hope's  grave- 
yards, a  not  uncommon  pastime  for  active 
Exchange  members  whose  first  through  spe- 
cials have  been  open-switched  by  the  "Sys- 
tem" towerman.  So  strong  had  become  this 
habit  of  going  about  from  pole  to  pole  with 
bent  head  and  a  far-off  gaze  that  his  fellow 
members  began  to  humour  and  respect  it. 
They  all  knew  that  Bob  had  gone  up  against 
the  Sugar  panic  hard.  No  one  knew  how 
hard,  but  all  guessed  from  his  changed 
appearance  and  habits  that  it  must  have 
been  a  bone  -  smashing  blow.  Nothing  so 
quickly  and  so  deeply  stirs  a  Stock  Exchange 
man's  feelings  for  his  brother  member  as 
to  know  that  "They"  have  ditched  his  El 
Dorado  flyer — that  is,  if  he  has  been  a  good 


90      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

fellow.  They  will  humour  his  every  whim 
and  patiently  await  the  day  when  he  shall 
be  again  in  normal  condition;  for  all  stock- 
gamblers  whom  Fate,  or  the  old  hag's  hunch- 
back twin,  the  "System,"  has  dumped,  either 
remain  below  the  surface  or  eventually  round 
to.  Every  day  as  soon  as  the  Stock  Ex- 
change closed,  Bob  disappeared,  whither  I 
could  not  learn.  I  had  tried  once  or  twice 
to  draw  him  out,  under  pretense  of  insisting 
upon  his  accepting  my  wife's  invitation  to 
dine  with  us.  He  always  had  a  ready  ex- 
cuse for  me  to  take  to  Kate,  but  that  was  all. 
Apparently  he  had  no  idea  that  I  took  any 
interest  in  his  movements  after  business  hours. 

As  for  Beulah  Sands,  there  was  but  one 
change  noticeable  in  her.  Whenever  a  foot- 
step stopped  in  front  of  her  office  she  looked 
up  from  her  work  with  an  expectant,  almost 
appealing  gaze,  as  though  she  were  always 
waiting  for  some  one.  I  had  not  seen  Bob 
in  her  <  ffice  since  that  disastrous  Sugar 
day,  and  as  he  went  directly  to  the  Exchange 
every  morning  and  left  there  every  afternoon 
without  returning  to  the  office,  doing  all 
his  business  by  messenger  or  over  the  wire, 
there  was  but  little  chance  of  his  meeting  her. 

November   1st  had   come   and   gone,   and 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     91 

the  books  showed  no  change  in  Beulah  Sands's 
account.  There  was  the  poor  little  $30,000 
balance;  no  other  entries.  One  afternoon 
Beulah  Sands  had  asked  for  a  meeting  be- 
tween Bob  and  myself  in  her  office.  She 
could  hardly  have  asked  Bob  to  come  without 
me,  but  I  knew  it  was  Bob  she  wanted  to 
see,  and  I  felt  that  the  best  thing  I  could  do 
for  them  was  to  leave  them  alone.  So  I 
made  some  excuse  for  a  moment's  delay  at 
my  desk,  telling  Bob  to  go  on  into  her  office, 
and  promising  to  follow  shortly.  He  went 
in,  leaving  the  door  partly  open.  I  think 
that  from  the  moment  he  entered  the  room 
both  of  them  utterly  forgot  my  existence. 
From  her  desk  Beulah  could  not  see  me, 
and  Bob  sat  so  that  his  back  was  half  toward 
me.  "I  dislike  to  trouble  you  about  my 
account,"  I  heard  her  begin  in  a  voice  a 
trifle  uneven,  "but  as  I  must  go  back  to 
Father  Christmas  week,  I  wanted  to  get 
your  advice  as  to  the  advisability  of  writing 
him  that,  though  there  is  still  a  chance  for 
doing  wonders,  I  do  not  think  we  shall  be 
able  to  save  him.  Of  course  I  won't  put 
it  in  just  that  blunt  way,  but  it  seems  to  me 
I  should  begin  to  prepare  him  for  the  blow. 
I  have  not  talked  over  any  more  plunging 


92      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

with  you,  Mr.  Brownley,  since  the  unlucky 
one  in  Sugar,  and " 

"Miss  Sands,  I  understand  what  you 
mean,"  Bob  broke  in,  "and  I  should  apologise 
for  not  having  consulted  with  you  about 
your  business  affairs.  The  fact  is,  I  have 
not  been  quite  clear  as  to  the  best  thing  to 
do.  I  hope  you  don't  think  I  have  forgot- 
ten. Never  for  a  moment  since  I  took  charge 
of  your  affairs  have  I  forgotten  my  promise 
to  see  that  they  were  kept  active.  Truly 
I  have  been  trying  to  think  out  some  success- 
ful plunge,  but — but" — there  was  a  hoarse- 
ness in  his  voice—**!  have  not  had  my  old 
confidence  in  myself  since  that  day  in  Sugar 
when  I  killed  your  hopes  and  destroyed  the 
chance  of  saving  your  father — no,  I  have 
not  had  that  confidence  a  man  must  have 
in  himself  to  win  at  this  game." 

There  was  a  silence,  and  then  I  heard 
an  indescribable  fluttering  rush  that  told 
as  plainly  as  sight  could  have  done  that  a 
woman  had  answered  her  heart's  call.  Look- 
ing up  involuntarily,  I  saw  a  sight  that  for 
a  long  moment  held  my  eyes  as  if  I  had  been 
fascinated.  It  was  Bob  bowed  forward  with 
his  face  hidden  in  his  hands  and  beside  him, 
on  her  knees,  Beulah  Sands,  her  arms  about 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      93 

his  neck,  his  head  drawn  down  to  her  bosom. 
"Bob,  Bob,"  she  said  chokingly,  "I  can- 
not stand  it  any  longer.  My  heart  is  break- 
ing for  you.  You  were  so  happy  when  I 
came  into  your  life,  and  the  happiness  is  chang- 
ed to  misery  and  despair,  and  all  for  me,  a 
stranger.  At  first  I  thought  of  nothing  but 
father  and  how  to  save  him,  but  since  that 
day  when  those  men  struck  at  your  heart, 
I  have  been  filled  with,  oh!  such  a  longing 

to  tell  you,  to  tell  you,  Bob " 

"What?  Beulah,  what?  For  the  love  of 
God,  don't  stop;  tell  me,  Beulah,  tell  me." 
He  had  not  lifted  his  head.  It  was  buried 
on  her  breast,  his  arms  closed  around  her. 
She  bent  her  head  and  laid  her  beautiful, 
soft  cheek,  down  which  the  tears  were  now 
streaming,  against  his  brown  hair.  "Bob, 
forgive  me,  but  I  love  you,  love  you,  Bob, 
as  only  a  woman  can  love  who  has  never 
known  love  before,  never  known  anything 
but  stern  duty.  Bob,  night  after  night  when 
all  have  left  I  have  crept  into  your  office  and 
sat  in  your  chair.  I  have  laid  my  head  on 
your  desk  and  cried  and  cried  until  it  seemed 
as  though  I  could  not  live  till  morning  with- 
out hearing  you  say  that  you  loved  me, 
and  that  you  did  not  mind  the  ruin  I  had 


94     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

brought  into  your  life.  I  have  patted  the 
back  of  your  chair  where  your  dear  head  had 
rested.  I  have  covered  the  arms  of  your 
chair,  that  your  strong,  brave  hands  had 
gripped,  with  kisses.  Night  after  night  I 
have  knelt  at  your  desk  and  prayed  to  God 
to  shield  you,  to  protect  you  from  all  harm, 
to  brush  away  the  black  cloud  I  brought  into 
your  life.  I  have  asked  Him  to  do  with 
me,  yes,  with  my  father  and  mother,  any- 
thing, anything  if  only  He  would  bring  back 
to  you  the  happiness  I  had  stolen.  Bob, 
I  have  suffered,  suffered,  as  only  a  woman 
can  suffer." 

She  was  sobbing  as  though  her  heart 
would  break,  sobbing  wildly,  convulsively, 
like  the  little  child  who  in  the  night  comes 
to  its  mother's  bed  to  tell  of  the  black  gob- 
lins that  have  been  pursuing  it.  Long  be- 
fore she  had  finished  speaking — and  it  took 
only  a  few  heart-beats  for  that  rush  of 
words — I  had  broken  the  power  of  the  fas- 
cination that  held  me,  had  turned  away 
my  eyes,  and  tried  not  to  listen.  For  fear 
of  breaking  the  spell,  I  did  not  dare  cross 
the  room  to  close  Beulah's  door  or  to  reach 
the  outer  door  of  my  office,  which  was  nearer 
hers  than  it  was  to  my  desk.  I  waited— 


95 

through  a  silence,  broken  only  by  Beulah's 
weeping,  that  seemed  hour-long.  Then  in 
Bob's  voice  came  one  low  sob  of  joy: 
"Beulah,  Beulah,  my  Beulah!" 
I  realised  that  he  had  risen.  I  rose  too, 
thinking  that  now  I  could  close  the  door. 
But  again  I  saw  a  picture  that  transfixed 
me.  Bob  had  taken  Beulah  by  both  shoulders 
and  he  held  her  off  and  looked  into  her  eyes 
long  and  beseechingly.  Never  before  nor 
since  have  I  seen  upon  human  face  that 
glorious  joy  which  the  old  masters  sought 
to  get  into  the  faces  of  their  worshippers  who, 
kneeling  before  Christ,  tried  to  send  to  Him, 
through  their  eyes,  their  soul's  gratitude  and 
love.  I  stood  as  one  enthralled.  Slowly 
and  as  reverently  as  the  living  lover  touches 
the  brow  of  his  dead  wife,  Bob  bent  his 
head  and  kissed  her  forehead.  Again  and 
again  he  drew  her  to  him  and  implanted 
upon  her  brow  and  eyes  and  lips  his  kisses. 
I  could  not  stand  the  scene  any  longer.  I 
started  to  the  corridor-door,  and  then,  as 
though  for  the  first  time  either  had  known 
I  was  within  hearing,  they  turned  and  stared 
at  me.  At  last  Bob  gave  a  long  deep  sigh, 
then  one  of  those  reluctant  laughs  of  happiness 
yet  wet  with  sobs. 


96     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

"Well,  Jim,  dear  old  Jim,  where  did  you 
come  from?  Like  all  eavesdroppers,  you 
have  heard  no  good  of  yourself.  Own  up, 
Jim,  you  did  not  hear  a  word  good  or  bad 
about  yourself,  for  it  is  just  coming  back 
to  me  that  we  have  been  selfish,  that  we  have 
left  you  entirely  out  of  our  business  con- 
ference." 

We  all  laughed,  and  Beulah  Sands,  with 
her  face  a  bloom  of  burning  blushes,  said: 
"Mr.  Randolph,  we  have  not  settled  what 
it  is  best  to  do  about  father's  affairs." 

After  a  little  we  did  begin  to  talk  business, 
and  finally  agreed  that  Beulah  should  write 
her  father,  wording  her  letter  as  carefully  as 
possible,  to  avoid  all  direct  statements,  but 
showing  him  that  she  had  made  but  little 
headway  on  the  work  she  had  come  North 
to  accomplish.  Bob  was  a  changed  being 
now;  so,  too,  was  Beulah  Sands.  Both  dis- 
cussed their  hopes  and  fears  with  a  frankness 
in  strange  contrast  to  their  former  manner. 
But  there  was  one  point  on  which  Bob  showed 
he  was  holding  back.  I  finally  put  it  to  him 
bluntly:  "Bob,  are  you  working  out  any- 
thing that  looks  like  real  relief  for  Miss 
Sands  and  her  father?" 

"I  don't  know  how  to  answer  you,  Jim. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      97 

I  can  only  say  I  have  some  ideas,  radical 
ones  perhaps,  but — well,  I  am  thinking  along 
certain  lines." 

I  saw  he  was  not  yet  willing  to  take  us  into 
his  confidence.  We  parted,  Bob  going  along 
in  the  cab  with  Miss  Sands, 

Two  days  afterward  she  sent  for  us  both 
as  soon  as  we  got  to  the  office. 

"I  have  this  telegram  from  father — it 
makes  me  uneasy:  'Mailed  to-day  important 
letter.  Answer  as  soon  as  you  receive.'  ' 

The  following  afternoon  the  letter  came. 
It  showed  Judge  Sands  in  a  very  nervous, 
uneasy  state.  He  said  he  had  been  living 
a  life  of  daily  terror,  as  some  of  his  friends, 
for  whose  estates  he  was  trustee,  had  been 
receiving  anonymous  letters,  advising  them 
to  look  into  the  judge's  trust  affairs;  that 
the  Reinhart  crowd  had  been  using  renewed 
pressure  to  make  him  let  go  all  his  Seaboard 
stock,  which  they  wanted  to  secure  at  the 
low  prices  to  which  they  had  depressed  it, 
in  order  that  they  might  reorganise  and  carry 
out  the  scheme  they  had  been  so  long  plan- 
ning. Judge  Sands  went  on  to  say  that  the 
day  he  was  compelled  to  sell  his  Seaboard 
stock  he  would  have  to  make  public  an 
announcement  of  his  condition,  as  there 


98      FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

could  be  no  sale  without  the  court's  consent. 
His  closing  was: 

"My  dear  daughter,  no  one  knows  better  than  I  the 
almost  hopelessness  of  expecting  any  relief  from  your  oper- 
ations. But  so  hopeless  have  I  become  of  late,  so  much  am 
I  reliant  upon  you,  my  dear  child,  and  eternal  hope  so 
springs  in  all  of  us  when  confronted  with  great  necessities, 
that  I  have  hoped  and  still  hope  that  you  are  to  be  the  sav- 
iour of  your  family;  that  you,  only  a  frail  child,  are  through 
God's  marvellous  workings  to  be  the  one  to  save  the  honour 
of  that  name  we  both  love  more  than  life;  the  one  to  keep 
the  wolf  of  poverty  from  that  door  through  which  so  far 
has  come  nothing  but  the  sunshine  of  prosperity  and  hap- 
piness; the  one,  my  dear  Beulah,  who  is  to  save  your  old 
father  from  a  dishonoured  grave.  Dear  child,  forgive  me  for 
placing  upon  your  weak  shoulders  the  additional  burden  of 
knowing  I  am  now  helpless  and  compelled  to  rely  absolutely 
upon  you.  After  you  have  read  my  letter,  if  there  is  no 
hope,  I  command  you  to  tell  me  so  at  once,  for  although  I 
am  now  financially  and  almost  mentally  helpless,  I  am  still  a 
Sands,  and  there  has  never  yet  been  one  of  the  name  who 
shirked  his  duty,  however  stern  and  painful  it  might  be." 

When  I  handed  the  letter  back  to  Miss 
Sands,  she  said: 

"Mr.  Randolph,  let  me  tell  you  and  Mr. 
Brownley  a  little  about  my  father  and  our 
home,  that  you  may  see  our  situation  as  it 
is.  My  father  is  one  of  the  noblest  men 
that  ever  lived.  I  am  not  the  only  one  who 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH      99 

says  that — if  you  were  to  ask  the  people  of 
our  State  to  name  the  one  man  who  had 
done  most  for  the  State  as  a  State,  most  for 
her  progressive  betterment,  most  for  her 
people  high  and  low,  white  and  black,  they 
would  answer,  *  Judge  Lee  Sands.'  He  has 
been,  and  is,  the  idol  of  our  people.  After 
he  was  graduated  from  Harvard,  he  entered 
the  law  office  of  my  grandfather,  Senator 
Robert  Lee  Sands.  Before  he  was  thirty 
he  was  in  Congress  and  was  even  then  re- 
puted the  greatest  orator  of  our  State,  where 
orators  are  so  plentiful.  He  married  my 
mother,  his  second  cousin,  Julia  Lee,  of 
Richmond,  at  twenty-five,  and  from  then 
until  the  attack  of  that  ruthless  money- 
shark,  led  a  life  such  as  a  true  man  would 
map  out  for  himself  if  his  Maker  granted 
him  the  privilege.  You  would  have  to  visit 
at  our  home  to  appreciate  my  father's  char- 
acter and  to  understand  how  terrible  this 
sorrow  is  to  him.  Every  morning  of  his  life 
he  spends  an  hour  after  breakfast  with  my 
dear  mother,  who  is  a  cripple  from  hip  dis- 
ease. He  takes  her  in  his  arms  and  brings 
her  down  from  her  room  to  the  library  as 
if  she  were  a  child.  He  then  reads  to  her — 
and  he  knows  good  books  as  well  as  he  knows 


100    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

his  friends.  After  he  takes  mother  back 
to  her  room,  he  gives  an  hour  to  our  people, 
the  blacks  of  the  plantation  and  his  white 
tenants  throughout  the  county.  He  is  a 
father  to  them  all.  He  settles  all  their  troubles, 
big  and  little.  Then  for  hours  he  and  I  go 
over  his  business  affairs.  Every  afternoon 
from  four  to  five  he  devotes  to  his  estates 
and  the  men  and  women  for  whom  he  acts 
as  trustee.  He  has  often  said  to  me:  'We 
have  a  clear  million  of  money  and  property, 
and  that  is  all  any  man  should  have  in  America. 
It  is  all  he  is  entitled  to  under  our  form  of 
government.  Any  more  than  that  an  honest 
man  should  in  one  way  or  another  return 
to  the  people  from  whom  he  has  taken  it. 
I  never  want  my  family  to  have  more  than 
a  million  dollars.'  When  he  went  into  the 
Seaboard  affair,  he  explained  to  me  that  it 
was  to  assist  the  Wilsons — they  were  old 
friends,  and  he  has  acted  as  their  solicitor 
for  years — in  building  up  the  South.  He 
discussed  with  me  the  right  and  advisability 
of  putting  in  the  trust  funds.  He  said  he 
considered  it  his  duty  to  employ  them  as 
he  did  his  own  in  enterprises  that  would  aid 
the  whole  people  of  the  South,  instead  of 
sending  them  to  the  North  to  be  used  in 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    101 

Wall  Street  as  belting  for  the  'System'  grinder. 
These  fortunes  were  made  in  the  South  by 
men  who  loved  their  section  of  the  country 
more  than  they  did  wealth,  and  why  should 
they  not  be  employed  to  benefit  that  part  of 
the  country  which  their  makers  and  owners 
loved  ?  I  remember  vividly  how  perplexed 
he  was  when,  at  the  beginning,  the  Wilsons 
would  show  him  that  the  investments  were 
returning  unusually  large  profits. 

"  'It  is  not  right,  Beulah,'  he  said  to  me 
one  morning  after  receiving  a  letter  from 
Baltimore  to  the  effect  that  Seaboard  stock 
and  bonds  had  advanced  until  his  investment 
showed  over  fifty  per  cent,  profit,  'it  is  not 
right  for  us  to  make  this  money.  No  man 
in  America  should  make  over  legal  rates  of 
interest  and  a  fair  profit  on  an  investment, 
that  is,  an  investment  of  capital  pure  and 
simple,  particularly  in  a  transportation  com- 
pany, where  every  dollar  of  profit  comes 
from  the  people  who  patronise  the  lines.  I 
have  worked  it  out  on  every  side,  and  it  is 
not  right;  it  would  not  be  legal  if  the  people, 
who  make  the  laws  for  their  own  better- 
ment, understood  their  affairs  as  they  should.' 

"He  was  always  writing  to  the  Wilsons 
to  conduct  the  affairs  of  the  Seaboard  so  that 


102    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

there  would  be  remaining  each  year  only 
profits  enough  to  keep  the  road  up  and  the 
wharves  in  good  condition  and  to  pay  the 
annual  interest  and  a  fair  dividend.  And 
when  the  Wilsons  came  to  our  house  to  lay 
before  him  the  offer  of  Reinhart  and  his 
fellow  plunderers  to  pay  enormous  profits 
for  the  control  of  the  Seaboard,  he  was  in- 
dignant and  argued  with  them  that  the  offer 
was  an  insult  to  honest  men.  It  was  he  who 
advised  the  trusteeship  control  of  the  Sea- 
board stock  to  prevent  Reinhart  from  securing 
control.  I  sat  in  the  library  when  he  talked 
to  the  elder  Wilson  and  the  directors. 

"He  appealed  directly  to  John  Wilson  to 
make  an  effort  to  stop  the  growing  tendency 
to  use  the  people  as  pawns  to  enslave  them- 
selves and  their  children.  He  said  some 
man  of  undoubted  probity,  standing,  and 
wealth,  someone  whom  the  people  trusted, 
must  start  the  fight  against  these  New  York 
fiends,  whose  only  thought  is  to  roll  up 
wealth.  And  he  told  John  Wilson  he  was 
the  man,  since  he  had  great  wealth,  honestly 
got  by  his  father  and  grandfather;  no  one 
would  accuse  him  of  being  a  hypocrite,  seek- 
ing notoriety,  and  his  standing  in  the  finan- 
cial world  was  so  old  and  solid  that  it  would 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     103 

have  to  listen  to  him.  I  remember  how 
emphatically  father  said:  'I  tell  you,  John, 
even  the  discussion  of  such  a  proposition  as 
that  scoundrel  Reinhart  makes  is  degrad- 
ing to  an  American's  honour/  He  said 
it  didn't  make  the  least  difference  if  Reinhart 
counted  his  millions  by  the  score,  and  was 
director  in  thirty  or  forty  great  institutions, 
and  gave  a  fortune  every  year  for  charity  and 
to  the  church — that  he  was  a  blackleg  just  the 
same.  And  so  is  any  man,  he  said,  who  dares 
to  say  he  will  take  the  stock  of  a  transporta- 
tion company,  which  represents  a  certain 
amount  of  money  invested,  and  double  or 
multiply  it  by  five  and  ten,  simply  because 
he  can  compel  the  people  to  pay  exorbitant 
fares  and  freight-rates  and  so  get  profits 
on  this  fraudulently  increased  capital. 

"It  was  the  decision  arrived  at  by  father 
and  the  Wilsons  at  this  meeting,  a  decision 
to  refuse  in  any  circumstances  to  allow  our 
Southern  people  to  be  bled  by  the  Wall 
Street  'System,'  that  started  Reinhart  and 
his  dollar-fiends  on  the  war-path.  You  can 
see  from  what  I  tell  you  of  my  father  the 
terrible  condition  he  is  in  now.  At  night, 
when  I  get  to  thinking  of  him,  hoping  against 
hope,  with  no  one  to  help  him,  no  one  with 


104   FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

whom  he  can  talk  over  his  affairs,  when  I 
think  of  his  nobleness  in  devoting  his  time 
to  mother  and  by  sheer  will-power  concealing 
from  her  his  awful  suffering,  it  nearly  drives 
me  mad." 

"Miss  Sands,  why  will  you  not  let  me 
lend  you  the  money  necessary  to  tide  your 
father  over  for  a  while?"  I  asked. 

'You  are  so  good,  Mr.  Randolph,  but  you 
don't  quite  understand  my  father  in  spite 
of  what  I  have  said.  He  would  not  relieve 
his  suffering  at  the  expense  of  another,  not 
if  it  were  a  hundred  times  more  acute.  You 
cannot  understand  the  old-fashioned,  deep- 
rooted  pride  of  the  Sands." 

"But  can  you  not,  at  least  temporarily, 
disguise  from  him  just  how  you  have  arranged 
the  relief?" 

Her  big  blue  eyes  stared  at  me  in  bewilder- 
ment. 

"Mr.  Randolph,  I  could  not  deceive  father. 
I  could  not  tell  him  a  lie  even  to  save  his  life. 
It  would  be  impossible.  My  father  abhors 
a  lie.  He  believes  a  man  or  woman  who 
would  lie  the  lowest  of  the  low  things  on 
earth.  When  I  go  back  to  my  father  he  will 
say,  'Tell  me  what  you  have  done.'  I  can 
just  see  him  now,  standing  between  the  big 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    105 

white  pillars  at  the  end  of  the  driveway.  I 
can  hear  him  say  calmly,  'Beulah,  my  daughter, 
welcome.  Your  mother  is  waiting  for  you 
in  her  room.  Do  not  lose  a  moment  getting 
to  her.'  Afterward  he'll  take  me  over  the 
plantation  to  show  me  all  the  familiar  things, 
and  not  one  word  will  he  allow  me  to  say 
about  our  affairs  until  dinner  is  over,  until 
the  neighbours  have  left,  for  no  Sands  re- 
turns from  long  absence  without  a  fitting 
home  welcome.  When  I  have  said  good 
night  to  mother  and  sister  and  he  has  drawn 
up  my  rocker  in  front  of  his  big  chair  in  the 
library  alcove  and  I've  lighted  his  cigar  for 
him,  he  will  look  me  in  the  eye  and  say, 
'Daughter,  tell  me  all  you  have  done.'  I 
would  no  more  think  of  holding  anything 
back  than  I  would  of  stabbing  him  to  the 
heart.  No,  Mr.  Randolph,  there  is  no  possi- 
bility of  relief  except  in  fairly  using  that 
$30,000  and  fairly  winning  back  what  Wall 
Street  has  stolen  from  father.  Even  that  will 
cause  both  of  us  many  twinges  of  conscience, 
and  anything  more  is  impossible.  If  this  can- 
not be  done,  father  must,  all  of  us  must, 
pay  the  penalty  of  Reinhart's  ruthless  act." 
Bob  had  listened,  but  made  no  comment 
until  she  was  through;  then  he  said,  "It 


106    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

looks  to  me  as  though  the  market  is  shaping 
up  so  that  we  may  be  able  to  do  something 
soon/*  It  was  evident  to  both  of  us  that  he 
had  some  plan  in  mind. 

Later  we  learned  that  that  night  Beulah 
wrote  her  father  a  long  letter,  telling  him 
what  she  had  done;  that  she  had  made 
almost  two  millions  profit  from  her  operations, 
that  they  had  been  lost,  and  that  the  outlook 
was  not  reassuring.  She  begged  him  to 
prepare  himself  for  the  final  calamity ;  promis- 
ing that  if  there  were  no  change  for  the  bet- 
ter by  December  1st,  she  would  come  home 
to  be  with  him  when  the  blow  fell.  She 
begged  him  to  prepare  to  meet  it  like  a 
Sands,  and  assured  him  that  if  worse  came  to 
worst  she  would  earn  enough  to  keep  poverty 
away.  Judge  Sands  would  receive  this  letter 
the  second  day  following,  Friday,  the  13th  day 
of  November.  My  God!  how  well  I  know 
the  date.  It  is  seared  into  my  brain  as 
though  with  a  white-hot  iron. 

After  our  talk  with  Beulah  Sands  I  begged 
Bob  to  dine  with  me  and  go  over  matters 
at  length  to  see  if  we  could  not  find  a  way 
out  to  relief. 

"No,  Jim,  I  have  work  to  do  to-night, 
worK  that  won't  wait.  That  Tariff  Bill 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     107 

was  buttoned  up  to-day,  and  it  has  just  been 
announced  that  the  Sugar  directors  have 
declared  a  big  extra  stock  dividend.  Things 
have  come  out  just  about  as  I  told  you  they 
would,  and  the  stock  is  climbing  to-day. 
They  say  it  will  touch  200  to-morrow  and 
'the  Street'  is  predicting  250  for  it  in  ten 
days.  Barry  Conant  has  been  a  steady 
buyer  all  day  and  the  news  bureaus  announced 
that  Camemeyer  and  the  'Standard  Oil' 
are  twenty  millions  winners.  They  say  the 
Washington  gamblers,  the  Congressmen,  Sen- 
ators, and  Cabinet  members  with  their  heel- 
ers and  lobbyists  have  made  a  killing.  About 
every  one  seems  to  have  fattened  up,  Jim, 
but  you  and  me  and  Beulah  Sands  and  the 
public.  The  public  gets  the  axe  both  ways, 
as  usual.  They  have  been  shaken  out  of 
their  stock,  and  they  will  be  compelled  to 
pay  millions  more  each  year  for  their  sugar 
than  they  would  if  this  law  had  not  been 
made  for  their  benefit.  Jim,  there  is  no 
disguising  the  fact  that  the  American  people 
are  as  helpless  in  the  hands  of  these  thugs 
of  the  'System*  as  though  they  lived  in  the 
realm  of  the  Sultan,  where  a  few  cutthroat 
brigands  are  licensed  to  rob  and  oppress 
to  their  heart's  content.  Jim  Randolph,  you 


108   FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

know  this  game  of  finance.  You  know 
how  it  is  worked  and  the  men  who  work  it. 
Tell  me  if  there  is  any  consideration  due  Wall 
Street  and  its  heart-and-soul  butchers  at 
the  hands  of  honest  men." 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean,  Bob. 
What  are  you  driving  at?" 

"Never  mind  what  I  am  driving  at.  I 
ask  you  whether,  if  an  honest  man  knew 
how  to  beat  Wall  Street  at  its  own  game, 
he  should  hesitate  to  beat  it — hesitate  be- 
cause of  anything  connected  with  conscience 
or  morals?  You  saw  what  Barry  Conant 
was  able  to  do  to  us  that  day  simply  by  stand- 
ing on  the  floor  of  the  Stock  Exchange  and 
outstaying  me  in  opening  and  closing  his 
mouth.  You  saw  he  was  able  to  sell  Sugar 
to  a  point  so  low  that  I  was  obliged  to  let  go 
of  our  150,000  shares  at  eight  to  ten  million 
dollars  less  than  we  could  have  got  for  them 
if  we  could  have  held  them  until  to-day. 
Because  of  this  trick  his  clients,  the  'System,' 
instead  of  us,  make  five  to  seven  millions." 

"I  don't  follow  you,  Bob.  1  know  that 
Barry  Conant  was  able  to  do  this  because  he 
had  more  money  behind  him  than  you." 

"  You  think  so,  do  you,  Jim  ?  That  is  the 
way  it  looks  to  you,  but  I  tell  you  money  had 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    109 

nothing  to  do  with  it.  Nothing  had  to  do 
with  it  but  the  fiendish  system  of  fraud  and 
trickery  upon  which  the  whole  stock-gambling 
structure  is  reared.  Nothing  entered  into 
the  whole  business  but  the  trickery  of  stock- 
gambling  as  conducted  to-day.  It  was  only 
a  question,  Jim,  of  a  man's  opening  and 
closing  his  mouth  and  spitting  out  words. 
From  the  minute  Barry  Conant  came  into 
that  crowd  until  he  left  and  we  were  ruined, 
he  showed  no  money,  no  anything  that  I 
did  not  show.  From  the  very  nature  of  the 
business  he  could  not.  He  simply  said  'Sold* 
oftener  and  longer  than  I  said  'Buy.'  He 
may  have  had  money  back  of  him,  or  he 
may  only  have  had  nerve.  God  Almighty 
is  the  only  one  who  can  tell,  for  when  Conant 
was  through  he  was  able  to  buy  back  at  90 
the  50,000  shares  he  sold  me  at  175,  the 
50,000  that  broke  my  back.  Jim,  if  I  had 
known  as  much  that  day  as  I  do  now  I  would 
have  stood  in  that  crowd  and  bought  all  the 
stock  he  sold  at  180  and  I  would  have  stood 
there  buying  until  hell  froze  over  or  he  quit; 
then  I  would  have  made  him  rebuy  it  at  28G 
or  2,080,  and  I  would  have  broken  him  and 
all  his  Camemeyer  and  'Standard  Oil'  backers; 
broken  them  to  their  last  crime-covered  dollar." 


110    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

"Bob,  what  are  you  talking  about?  It  is 
all  Chinese  to  me.  I  cannot  get  head  or 
tail  of  what  you  are  driving  at." 

"I  know  you  can't,  Jim,  neither  could 
Wall  Street  if  it  were  listening  to  me.  But 
you  will,  and  Wall  Street  will  too,  before 
many  days  go  by.  Now  I  must  be  off.  I 
have  work  to  do." 

He  put  on  his  hat  and  left  me  trying  to 
puzzle  out  just  what  he  meant. 

Next  day  the  Sugar  bulls  had  the  centre 
of  the  Stock  Exchange  stage.  All  day  long 
they  tossed  Sugar  from  one  to  another  as 
though  each  thousand  shares  had  been  a 
wisp  of  hay  instead  of  $200,000 — for  soon 
after  the  opening  it  soared  to  200.  The 
"System's"  cohorts  were  in  absolute  control, 
with  Barry  Conant  never  a  minute  away 
from  the  Sugar-pole,  always  on  the  alert  to 
steer  the  course  of  prices  when  they  threatened 
to  run  away  on  the  up  or  the  down  side. 
It  was  evident  to  the  expert  readers  of  the 
tape  that  the  "System"  was  currying  its 
steed  for  an  exceptionally  brilliant  run.  Ike 
Bloomstein,  the  Average  Fiend,  who  for  forty 
years  had  kept  close  track  of  every  move- 
ment on  the  floor,  and  who  would  bet  any- 
thing, from  his  Fifth  Avenue  mansion  to  his 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    111 

overripe  boardroom  straw  hat,  that  all  stocks 
and  movements  were  as  strictly  subject  to 
the  law  of  averages  as  are  the  tides  to  the 
moon  and  sun,  remarked  to  Joe  Barnes, 
the  loan  expert: 

"  'Cam'  unt  de  Keroseners  are  pudding 
up  egstra  dop  rails  to  dot  wool-pen  deh  haf 
ben  pilding  since  deh  took  Pop  Prownlee 
and  deh  Rantolphs  into  gamp.  Unless  my 
topesheet  goes  pack  on  me,  for  deh  first 
dime  in  forty  years  dere  vill  pe  a  record  clip 
pefore  a  veek  from  to-tay." 

"I  am  with  you  there,  Ike,"  answered 
Joe.  "If  Barry  Conant's  knife-edged  teeth 
ever  spelt  a  killin',  they  do  to-day.  I  just 
got  orders  from  somewhere  to  drop  call  money 
from  four  to  two  and  a  half  per  cent.,  and 
they  have  given  me  ten  millions  to  drop  it 
with  and  the  order  is  to  favour  Sugar  as 
'collat.'  Some  one  is  anxious  to  make  it 
easy  for  the  bleaters  to  get  the  coin  to  buy  all 
the  Sugar  they  want.  Ike,  you  and  I  might 
make  turkey  money  for  Thanksgiving  if  we 
only  knew  whether  Barry  and  his  bunch 
were  going  to  shoot  her  up  thirty  or  forty 
points  before  they  turned  the  bag  upside  down, 
or  whether  they  will  bury  them  from  200 
to  150.  What  do  you  think?" 


112   FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

"I  gant  make  out,  aldo  I  haf  vatched 
dem  sharp  all  day.  Dey  certainly  haf  deh 
lambs  lined  up  right  now  for  any  vey  dey  vont 
to  twist  id.  I  nefer  see  a  petter  market  for 
a  deluge.  From  Barry's  movements  all  day 
I  should  say  dey  vould  keep  hoistin'  her 
until  apout  noon  to-morrow,  unt  dat  deh 
might  get  her  up  to  two-tirty  or  even  to  deh 
two-fifty.  Put  dere  are  von  or  two  topes 
on  deh  sheet  vhat  run  deh  uder  vay.  First 
der  is  dey  fact  you  gant  run  out,  dat  dere  is 
alreaty  on  deh  Sugar  vagon  deh  piggest 
load  of  chuicy  suckers  dat  efer  game  in  from 
deh  suppurbs.  Sharley  Pates  says  if  any 
von  hat  tapped  his  Vashington  vire  er  any 
utter  Capitol  vire  dis  veek  he  vould  haf 
tought  dere  vas  a  Senate,  House,  unt  Kabinet 
roll-gall  on.  Deh  topes  say  'Cam*  vill  nefer 
led  dat  fat  punch  off  grafters  slite  out  mit 
real  money  if  he  gan  help  id  unt  deh  game 
iss  endirely  in  his  hands." 

"I  agree  with  you,  Ike.  If  I  had  the 
steering  of  this  killing  I  don't  think  I  would 
take  any  chance  of  tempting  them  to  dump 
and  grab  the  profits  by  carrying  it  much 
over  200.  But  you  can't  tell  what  'Cam' 
and  those  four-eyed  dentists  at  26  Broadway 
will  do." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     113 

"Yes,  put  der  iss  anudder  t'ing,  Cho, 
dat  makes  me  sit  up  unt  plink  about  her 
goin'  ofer  two  hundred.  To-morrow's  Friday 
der  t'irteenth." 

"Of  course,  Ike,  that  is  something  to  be 
reckoned  with,  and  every  man  on  the  floor 
and  in  the  Street  as  well  has  his  eye  on  it. 
Friday,  the  13th,  would  break  the  best  bull 
market  ever  under  way.  You  and  I  know 
that,  Ike,  and  the  dope  shows  it  too,  but  you 
have  got  to  stack  this  up  against  it  on  this 
trip :  no  man  on  the  floor  knows  what  Friday 
the  13th,  means  better  than  Barry  Conant. 
He  has  worked  it  to  the  queen's  taste  many 
a  time.  Why,  Barry  would  not  eat  to-day 
for  fear  the  food  would  get  stuck  in  his  wind- 
pipe. He's  never  left  the  pole  for  a  minute; 
but  suppose,  Ike,  Barry  has  tipped  off  'Cam' 
that  all  the  boys  will  let  go  their  fliers,  and 
most  of  them  will  take  one  on  the  short  side 
over  to-night  for  a  superstition  drop  at  the 
opening;  and  suppose  'Cam'  has  told  him 
to  take  them  all  into  camp  and  give  her  a 
rafter-scraper  at  the  opening,  where  would 
old  Friday,  13th,  land  on  to-morrow's  dope- 
sheets  ?  Bring  up  the  average,  wouldn't  it, 
for  five  years  to  come?  I  tell  you,  Ike, 
she's  too  deep  for  me  this  run,  and  I'm  goin' 


114    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

to  let  her  alone  and  pay  for  the  turkey  out  of 
loan  commissions  or  stick  to  plain  work- 
day food." 

"Zame  here,  Cho.  Say,  Cho,  haf  you 
noticed  Pop  Prownlee  to-tay  ?  He  has  frozen 
to  deh  fringe  off  dat  Sugar  crowd  ess  t'ough 
some  von  hat  nipped  'is  scarf-pin  unt  he  vos 
layin'  for  him  ass  he  game  out.  He  hasn't 
made  a  trade  to-tay  unt  yet  he  sticks  like  a 
stamp-tax.  I  ben  keeping  my  eyes  on  him 
for  I  t'ought  he  hat  someding  up  his  sleeve 
dat  might  raise  tust  ven  he  tropt  id.  I  dink 
Parry  has  hat  deh  same  itear.  He  never 
loses  sight  of  him,  yet  Pop  hasn't  made  a 
trade  to-tay,  unt  here  id  iss  twenty  minutes 
of  der  glose  unt  dere  iss  Parry  in  deh  centre 
again  whooping  her  up  ofer  two  hundred 
unt  four." 


CHAPTER  V 

'"pHURSDAY,  November  12th,  was  a 
memorable  day  in  Wall  Street.  As 
the  gong  pealed  its  the-game's-closed-till- 
another-day,  the  myriad  of  tortured  souls 
that  are  supposed  to  haunt  the  treacherous 
bogs  and  quicksands  of  the  great  Exchange, 
where  lie  their  earthly  hopes,  must  have 
prayed  with  renewed  earnestness  for  its  destruc- 
tion before  the  morrow.  Never  had  the 
Stock  Exchange  folded  its  tents  with  surer 
confidence  of  continuing  its  victorious  march. 
Sugar  advanced  with  record-breaking  total 
sales  to  207^  and  in  the  final  half-hour  car- 
ried the  whole  list  of  stocks  up  with  it.  In 
that  time  some  of  the  railroads  jumped  ten 
points.  Sugar  closed  at  the  very  top  amid 
great  excitement,  with  Barry  Conant  taking 
all  offered.  During  the  last  thirty  minutes 
it  had  become  evident  to  all  that  the  board- 
room traders  and  plungers,  together  with 
many  of  the  semi-professional  gamblers,  who 
operated  through  commission  houses,  were 
selling  out  their  long  stock  and  going  short 

115 


116    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

over  the  opening  of  the  Wall  Street  hoodoo- 
day,  Friday,  the  thirteenth  of  the  month. 
But  it  was  also  evident,  with  the  heavy  selling 
at  the  close  and  the  stiffness  of  the  price, 
which  had  never  wavered  as  block  after 
block  was  thrown  on  the  market,  that  some 
powerful  interest  as  well  had  taken  cognisance 
of  the  fact  that  the  morrow  was  hoodoo- 
day.  At  the  close,  most  of  the  sellers,  had 
they  been  granted  another  five  minutes, 
would  have  repurchased,  even  at  a  loss,  what 
they  had  sold,  for  it  looked  as  though  they 
had  sold  themselves  into  a  trap.  Their 
anxiety  was  intensified  by  the  publication, 
a  few  minutes  later,  of  this  item: 

"Barry  Conant  in  coming  from  the  Sugar  crowd  after  the 
close  remarked  to  a  fellow  broker,  'By  three  o'clock  to- 
morrow, Friday,  the  13th,  will  have  a  new  meaning  to  Wall 
Street.'  This  was  interpreted  as  pointing  to  a  terrific  jump 
in  Sugar  tomorrow." 

"The  Street"  knew  that  the  news  bureau 
that  sent  out  this  item  was  friendly  to  Barry 
Conant  and  the  "System,"  and  that  it  would 
print  nothing  displeasing  to  them.  There- 
fore, this  must  be  a  foreword  of  the  coming 
harvest  of  the  bulls  and  the  slaughter  of  the 
bears. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    117 

Others  than  Ike  Bloomstein  remarked  upon 
the  fact  that  Bob  Brownley  had  hung  close 
to  the  Sugar-pole  all  day,  but  when  the  close 
had  come  and  gone  without  his  having 
anything  to  do  with  the  Sugar  skyrockets, 
he  dropped  out  of  his  fellow-brokers'  minds. 
Wall  Street  has  no  use  for  any  but  the  "doer." 
The  poet  and  the  mooner  would  be  no  more 
secure  from  interruption  in  the  centre  of  the 
Sahara  than  in  Wall  Street  between  ten  and 
three  o'clock.  Some  sage  has  said  that  the 
human  mind,  like  the  well-bucket,  can  carry 
only  its  fill.  The  Wall  Street  mind  always 
has  its  fill  of  budding  dollars.  In  conse- 
quence, there  is  never  room  for  those  other 
interests  that  enter  the  normal  mind. 

Friday,  the  13th  of  November,  drifted 
over  Manhattan  Island  in  a  drear  drizzle 
of  marrow-chilling  haze,  which  just  missed 
being  rain — one  of  those  New  York  days 
that  give  a  hesitating  suicide  renewed  courage 
to  cut  the  mortal  coil.  By  ten  o'clock  it 
had  settled  down  on  the  Stock  Exchange 
and  its  surrounding  infernos  with  a  clammi- 
ness that  damped  the  spirits  of  the  most 
rampant  bulls.  No  class  in  the  world  is 
so  susceptible  to  atmospheric  conditions  as 
stock-gamblers.  Many  a  stout-hearted  one 


118   FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

has  been  known  to  postpone  the  inauguration 
of  a  long-planned  coup  merely  because  the 
air  filled  his  blood  with  the  dank  chill  of 
superstition.  Because  of  the  expected  Sugar 
pyrotechnics,  Stock  Exchange  members  had 
gathered  early;  the  brokers'  offices  were 
crowded  to  overflowing  before  ten;  the  morn- 
ing papers,  not  only  in  New  York  but  in 
Boston,  Philadelphia,  and  other  centres,  were 
filled  with  stories  of  the  big  rise  that  was  to 
take  place  in  Sugar.  The  knowing  ones  saw 
the  ear-marks  of  the  "System's"  press-agent 
in  these  stories;  and  they  knew  that  this 
industrious  institution  had  not  sat  up  the 
night  before  because  of  insomnia.  All  the 
signs  pointed  to  a  killing,  and  a  terrific  one 
—pointed  so  plainly  that  the  bears  and  Sugar 
shorts  found  no  hope  in  the  atmosphere  or 
the  date. 

Bob  had  not  been  near  the  office  the  after- 
noon before,  and  as  he  had  not  come  in  by 
five  minutes  to  ten  I  decided  to  go  over  to  the 
Exchange  and  see  if  he  were  going  to  mix 
up  in  the  baiting  of  the  Sugar  bears.  I 
had  no  specific  reasons  for  thinking  he  was 
interested  except  his  recent  queer  actions, 
particularly  his  hanging  to  the  Sugar-pole, 
yet  doing  nothing,  the  day  before.  But 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    119 

it  is  one  of  the  best-established  traditions 
of  stock-gambledom  that  when  an  operator 
has  been  bitten  by  a  rabid  stock  he  is  invari- 
ably attracted  to  it  every  time  afterward 
that  it  shows  signs  of  frothing.  More  than 
all,  I  had  one  of  those  strong  nowhere-born- 
nowhere-cradled  intuitions  common  to  those 
living  in  the  stock-gambling  world,  which 
made  me  feel  the  creepy  shadow  of  coming 
events. 

As  on  that  day  a  few  weeks  before,  the 
crowd  was  at  the  Sugar-pole,  but  its  align- 
ment was  different.  There  in  the  centre 
were  Barry  Conant  and  his  trusted  lieutenants, 
but  no  opposing  rival.  None  of  those 
hundreds  of  brokers  showed  that  desperate 
resolve  to  do  or  die  that  is  born  of  a  necessity. 
They  were  there  to  buy  or  sell,  but  not  to  put 
up  a  life  or  death,  on-me-depends-the-result 
fight.  Those  who  were  long  of  stock  could 
easily  be  distinguished  by  their  expressions 
of  joy  from  the  shorts,  who  had  seen  the 
handwriting  on  the  wall  and  were  filled 
with  uncertainty,  fear,  terror.  The  demeanour 
of  Barry  Conant  and  his  lieutenants  expressed 
confidence:  they  were  going  to  do  what 
they  were  there  to  do.  They  showed  by  their 
tight-buttoned  coats,  and  squared  shoulders 


120   FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

that  they  expected  lots  of  rush,  push,  and  haul 
work,  but  apparently  they  anticipated  no 
last-ditch  fighting.  The  gong  pealed  and 
the  crowd  of  brokers  sprang  at  one  another, 
but  only  for  blood,  not  flesh,  bone,  heart, 
and  soul;  just  blood.  The  first  price  on 
Sugar  was  211  for  3,000  shares.  Someone 
sold  it  in  a  block.  Barry  Conant  bought  it. 
It  did  not  require  three  eyes  to  see  that  the 
seller  was  one  of  his  lieutenants.  This  meant 
what  is  known  as  a  "wash"  sale,  a  fictitious 
one  arranged  in  advance  between  two  brokers 
to  establish  the  basis  for  the  trades  that  are 
to  follow — one  of  those  minor  frauds  of 
stock-gambling  by  which  the  public  is  de- 
ceived and  the  traders  and  plungers  are 
handicapped  with  loaded  dice.  In  principle, 
it  is  a  device  older  than  stock  exchanges 
themselves,  and  is  put  to  use  elsewhere  than 
on  the  floor.  For  instance,  four  genuine 
buyers  want  a  particular  animal  worth  $200 
at  a  horse  auction.  Its  owner's  pal  starts 
the  bidding  at  $400,  and  the  four,  not  being 
up  in  horse  values,  are  thereby  induced  to 
reach  for  it  at  between  $400  to  $500.  But 
human  nature,  whether  at  horse  sales  or  at 
stock-gambling,  loves  to  be  "  hinky-dinked " 
as  much  as  the  moth  loves  to  play  tag  with 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     121 

the  candle  flame.  In  five  minutes  Sugar 
was  selling  at  221,  and  the  frantic  shorts 
were  grabbing  for  it  as  though  there  never 
was  to  be  another  share  put  on  sale,  while 
Barry  Conant  and  his  lieutenants  were  most 
industriously  pushing  it  just  beyond  their 
reaching  finger-tips,  either  by  buying  it  as 
fast  as  it  was  offered  by  genuine  sellers  or 
by  taking  what  their  own  pals  threw  in  the 
air. 

I  was  not  surprised  to  see  Bob's  tall  form 
wedged  in  the  crowd  about  two-thirds  of 
the  way  from  the  centre.  Every  other  active 
floor  member  was  there  too.  Even  Ike 
Bloomstein  and  Joe  Barnes,  who  seldom 
went  into  the  big  crowds,  were  on  hand, 
perhaps  to  catch  a  flier  for  their  Thanksgiving 
turkey  money,  perhaps  to  get  as  near  the 
killing  as  possible.  Bob  was  not  trading,  al- 
though, as  on  the  day  before,  he  never  took 
his  eye  off  Barry  Conant.  I  said  to  myself, 
"He  is  trying  to  fathom  Barry  Conant's 
movements,"  but  for  what  purpose  puzzled 
me.  The  hands  of  the  big  clock  on  the  wall 
showed  that  trading  had  been  thirty  minutes 
under  way  and  still  Barry  Conant  was  push- 
ing up  the  price.  His  voice  had  just  rung 
out  "25  for  any  part  of  5,000"  when,  like 


an  echo,  sounded  through  the  hall,  "Sold." 
It  was  Bob.  He  had  worked  his  way  to  the 
centre  of  the  crowd  and  stood  in  front  of  Barry 
Conant.  He  was  not  the  Bob  who  had 
taken  Barry  Conant's  gaff  that  afternoon 
a  few  weeks  before.  I  never  saw  him  cooler, 
calmer,  more  self-possessed.  He  was  the 
incarnation  of  confident  power.  A  cold,  cyni- 
cal smile  played  around  the  corners  of  his 
mouth  as  he  looked  down  upon  his  opponent. 
The  effect  upon  Barry  Conant  was  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  Bob's  last  bid  on  the  day 
when  Beulah  Sands's  hopes  went  skyward 
in  dust.  It  did  not  rouse  him  to  the  wild, 
furious  desire  for  the  onslaught  that  he 
showed  then,  but  seemed  to  quicken  his  alert, 
prolific  mind  to  exercise  all  its  cunning. 
I  think  that  in  that  one  moment  Barry  Conant 
recalled  his  suspicions  of  the  day  before, 
when  he  had  wondered  what  Bob's  presence 
in  the  crowd  meant,  and  that  he  saw  again 
the  picture  of  Bob  on  the  day  when  he  him- 
self had  ditched  Bob's  treasure-train.  He 
hesitated  for  just  the  fraction  of  a  second, 
while  he  waved  with  lightning-like  rapidity 
a  set  of  finger  signals  to  his  lieutenants. 
Then  he  squared  himself  for  the  encounter. 
"25  for  5,000."  Cold,  cold  as  the  voice 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     123 

of  a  condemning  judge  rang  Bob's  "Sold." 
"25  for  5,000."  "Sold."  "25  for  5,000." 
"Sold."  Their  eyes  were  fixed  upon  each 
other,  in  Barry's  a  defiant  glare,  in  Bob's 
mingled  pity  and  contempt.  The  rest  of  the 
brokers  hushed  their  own  bids  and  offers 
until  it  could  have  truthfully  been  said 
that  the  floor  of  the  Stock  Exchange  was 
quiet,  an  almost  unheard-of  thing  in  like 
circumstances.  Again  Barry  Conant's  voice, 
"25  for  5,000."  "Sold."  "25  for  5,000." 
"Sold."  Barry  Conant  had  met  his  master. 
Whether  it  was  that  for  the  first  time  in  all 
his  wonderful  career  he  realised  that  the 
"System"  was  to  meet  its  Nemesis,  or  what 
the  cause,  none  could  tell,  perhaps  not  even 
Barry  Conant  himself,  but  some  emotion 
caused  his  olive  face  for  an  instant  to  turn 
pale,  and  gave  his  voice  a  tell-tale  quiver. 
Once  more  pealed  forth"  25  for  5,000."  That 
Bob  saw  the  pallor,  that  he  caught  the  quiver, 
was  evident  to  all,  for  the  instant  his  "Sold" 
rang  out,  he  followed  it  with  "5,000  at  24, 
23,  22,  20."  Neither  Barry  Conant  nor 
any  of  his  lieutenants  got  in  a  "Take  it"; 
although  whether  they  wanted  to  or  not  was 
an  open  question  until  Bob  allowed  his 
voice  to  dwell  just  a  pendulum  swing  of 


124    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

time  on  the  20.  It  was  as  if  he  were  tantalis- 
ing them  into  sticking  by  their  guns.  By 
the  time  he  paused,  Barry  Conant's  nerve 
was  back,  for  his  piercing  "Take  it"  had 
linked  to  it  "20  for  any  part  of  10,000." 
The  bid  was  yet  on  his  lips  when  Bob's 
deep  voice  rang  out  "Sold."  "Any  part 
of  25,000  at  19,  18,  15,  10."  Hell  was  now 
loose.  Back  and  forth,  up  against  the  rail, 
around  the  room  and  back  and  around  again, 
the  crowd  surged  for  fifteen  of  the  wildest, 
craziest  minutes  in  the  history  of  the  New 
York  Stock  Exchange,  a  history  replete  with 
records  of  wild  and  crazy  scenes. 

At  last  from  sheer  exhaustion  there  came 
a  ten  minutes'  lull,  which  was  used  in  com- 
paring trades.  At  the  beginning  of  the  respite 
Sugar  was  selling  at  155,  for  in  that  quarter- 
hour  of  madness  it  had  broken  from  210  to 
155,  but  when  the  ten  minutes  had  elapsed, 
the  stock  had  worked  back  to  167.  Barry 
Conant  had  again  taken  the  centre  of  the 
crowd  after  hastily  scanning  the  brief  notes 
handed  him  by  messenger-boys  and  giving 
orders  to  his  lieutenants.  He  had  evidently 
received  reinforcements  in  the  form  of  re- 
newed orders  from  his  principals.  Many 
of  the  faces  that  fringed  the  inner  circle  of 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    125 

that  crowd  were  frightful  to  look  upon, 
some  white  as  though  just  lifted  from  hospital 
pillows,  others  red  to  the  verge  of  apoplexy 
—all  strained  as  though  awaiting  the  coming 
of  the  jury  with  a  life  or  death  verdict.  They 
all  knew  that  Bob  had  sold  more  than  a  hun- 
dred thousand  shares  of  Sugar  upon  which 
the  profits  must  be  more  than  four  million 
dollars.  Would  he  resume  selling  or  was 
he  through  ?  Was  it  short  stock,  which  must 
be  bought  back,  or  long  stock;  and  if  long, 
whose  stock?  Were  the  insiders  selling  out 
on  one  another,  or  were  they  all  selling  to- 
gether, and  under  cover  of  Barry  Conant's 
movements  were  Camemeyer  and  "Standard 
Oil"  emptying  their  bag  preparatory  to  the 
slaughter  of  the  Washington  contingent?  All 
these  questions  were  rushing  through  the 
heads  of  that  crowd  of  brokers  like  steam 
through  a  boiler,  now  hot,  now  cold,  but 
always  at  high  pressure,  for  upon  the  correct- 
ness of  the  answers  depended  the  fortune 
of  many  who  breathlessly  awaited  the  re- 
newal or  the  suspension  of  the  contest.  Even 
Barry  Conant's  usually  impassive  face  wore 
a  tinge  of  anxiety. 

Indeed,    Bob's   was   the   only   one   in   the 
centre  of  that  throng  that  showed  no  sign  of 


126   FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

what  was  going  on  behind  it.  The  same 
cynical  smile  that  had  been  there  since  the 
opening  still  played  around  the  corners  of 
his  mouth  as  he  squared  himself  in  front  of 
his  opponent.  All  knew  now  that  he  was 
not  through.  Barry  Conant  had  evidently 
decided  to  force  the  fighting,  although  more 
cautiously  than  before.  "67  for  a  thousand." 
One  of  his  lieutenants  bid  67  for  500,  another 
67  for  300,  and  as  Bob  had  not  yet  shown 
his  intention  of  meeting  their  bids,  67  for 
different  amounts  was  heard  all  over  the  crowd. 
Bob  might  have  been  tossing  a  mental  coin  to 
decide  the  advisability  of  buying  back  what 
he  had  sold;  he  might  have  been  adding  up 
the  bids  as  they  were  made.  He  said  noth- 
ing for  a  fraction  of  a  minute,  which  to  those 
tortured  men  must  have  seemed  like  an 
age.  Then  with  a  wave  of  his  hand,  as  though 
delivering  a  benediction,  he  swept  the  circle 
with  a  cold-blooded,  "Sold  the  lots.  5,600 
in  all." 

"Sixty-seven  for  a  thousand  "—again  Barry 
Conant's  bid.  "Sold."  "67  for  5,000."  "Sold." 
"66  for  a  thousand."  "Sold."  The  drop 
from  five  thousand  to  one  thousand  and  a 
dollar  a  share  in  Barry  Conant's  bids  was  the 
mortally  wounded  but  still  game  general's 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    127 

"Sound  the  retreat."  Bob  heard  it.  "  Any  part 
of  10,000  at  65,  64,  62,  60."  The  din  was  now 
as  fierce  as  before.  The  entire  crowd,  all  but 
Barry  Conant  and  his  lieutenants,  seemed  to 
have  concluded  that  Bob's  renewal  of  attack 
meant  that  his  was  the  winning  side,  and  those 
who  had  been  hanging  on  to  their  stock,  hoping 
against  hope,  and  those  who  were  short  and 
had  been  undecided  whether  to  cover  or  to 
hold  on  and  sell  more  for  greater  profits,  vied 
with  one  another  in  a  frantic  effort  to  sell. 
All  could  now  feel  the  coming  panic.  All 
could  see  that  it  was  to  be  a  bad  one,  as  the 
least  informed  on  the  floor  knew  that  there 
was  a  tremendous  amount  of  Sugar  stock  in 
the  hands  of  Washington  novices  at  speculation 
and  of  others  who  had  bought  it  at  high  prices. 
Sugar  was  now  dropping  two,  three,  five 
dollars  a  share  between  trades,  and  the 
panic  was  spreading  to  the  other  poles,  as  is 
always  the  case,  for  when  there  are  sudden 
large  losses  in  one  stock,  the  losers  must  throw 
over  the  other  stocks  they  hold  to  meet  this 
loss,  and  thus  the  whole  structure  tumbles 
like  a  house  of  cards.  Sugar  had  just  crossed 
110  when  the  loud  bang  of  the  president's 
gavel  resounded  through  the  room.  Instantly 
there  was  a  silence  as  of  death.  All  knew 


128    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

the  meaning  of  the  sound,  the  most  ominous 
ever  heard  in  a  stock  exchange,  calling  for  the 
temporary  suspension  of  business  while  the 
president  announces  the  failure  of  some 
member  or  house. 

PERKINS,  BLANCHARD  &  COMPANY 

ANNOUNCE    THAT   THEY    CANNOT    MEET    THEIR 
OBLIGATIONS 

This  statement  that  one  of  the  oldest  houses 
had  been  swamped  in  the  crash  Bob  had 
started  caused  further  frantic  selling,  and, 
as  though  every  member  had  employed  the 
lull  to  refill  his  lungs,  a  howl  arose  that  pealed 
and  wailed  to  the  dome. 

I  watched  Bob  closely;  in  fact,  it  was 
impossible  for  me  to  take  my  eyes  off  him ;  he 
seemed  absolutely  unmindful  of  the  agon- 
ised shrieks  about  him,  for  the  frenzied  brokers 
were  no  longer  crying  their  bids  or  offers,  but 
screaming  them.  He  still  continued  relent- 
lessly to  hammer  Sugar,  offering  it  in  thou- 
sand and  tens  of  thousand  lots. 

Again  and  again  the  gavel  fell,  and  again 
and  again  an  announcement  of  failure  was 
followed  by  blood-curdling  howls.  When 
Sugar  struck  80 — not  180,  but  plain  80 — 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    129 

it  seemed  that  the  last  day  of  stock  specula- 
tion was  at  hand.  Announcements  were 
being  made  every  few  minutes  of  the  failure 
of  this  bank,  the  closing  of  the  doors  of  that 
trust  company.  Where  would  it  end  ?  What 
power  could  stop  this  Niagara  of  molten 
dollars  ?  Suddenly  above  the  tumult  rose 
Bob  Brownley's  voice.  He  must  have  been 
standing  on  his  tiptoes.  His  hands  were 
raised  aloft.  He  seemed  to  tower  a  head 
above  the  mob.  His  voice  was  still  clear  and 
unimpaired  by  the  terrible  strain  of  the  past 
two  hours.  To  that  mob  it  must  have  sounded 
like  the  trumpet  of  the  delivering  angel. 
"80  for  any  part  of  25,000  Sugar."  Instantly 
Sugar  was  hurled  at  him  from  all  sides  of  the 
crowd.  He  was  the  only  buyer  of  moment 
who  had  appeared  since  Sugar  broke  125. 
Barry  Conant  and  his  lieutenants  had  disap- 
peared like  snowflakes  at  the  opening  of  the 
door  of  the  firebox  of  a  locomotive  speeding 
through  the  storm.  In  a  few  seconds  Bob 
had  been  sold  all  the  25,000  he  had  bid  for. 
Again  his  voice  rang  out:  "80  for  25,000." 
The  sellers  momentarily  halted.  He  got  only 
a  few  thousands  of  his  twenty-five.  "85  for 
25,000.'  A  few  thousands  more.  "90  for 
25,000."  Still  fewer  thousands.  His  bidding 


130    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

was  beginning  to  tell  on  the  mob.  A  cry 
ran  through  the  room  into  the  crowds 
around  the  other  poles—  "Brownley  has 
turned!"— and  taking  renewed  courage  at 
the  report,  the  bulls  rallied  their  forces  and 
began  to  bid  for  the  different  stocks,  which 
a  moment  before  it  had  seemed  that  no  one 
wanted  at  any  price. 

In  a  chip  of  a  minute  the  whole  scene 
changed;  there  was  almost  as  wild  a  panic 
on  the  up  side  as  there  had  been  on  the  down. 
Bob  Brownley  continued  buying  Sugar  until 
he  had  pushed  it  above  150.  He  then  went 
about  tallying  up  his  trades.  At  the  end  of 
ten  minutes'  calculation  he  returned  to  the 
centre  and  bought  11,000  shares  more;  com- 
ing out,  his  eye  caught  mine. 

"Jim,  have  you  been  here  long?" 

"An  eternity.  I  was  here  at  the  opening 
and  I  pray  God  never  to  put  me  through 
another  two  hours  like  the  past  two.  It 
seems  a  hideous  dream,  a  nightmare.  Bob, 
in  the  name  of  God  what  have  you  been 
doing?" 

He  gave  me  a  wild,  awful  look  of  exulta- 
tion. Sublime  triumph  shone  in  those  blaz- 
ing brown  orbs,  triumph  such  as  I  Lnd  never 
seen  in  the  eyes  of  man. 


*    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    131 

"Jim  Randolph,  I  have  been  giving  Wall 
Street  and  its  hell  'System'  a  dose  of  its  own 
poison,  a  good  full-measure  dose.  They 
planned  by  harvesting  a  fresh  crop  of  human 
hearts  and  souls  on  the  bull  side  to  give 
Friday  the  13th  a  new  meaning.  Tradition 
says  Friday  the  13th  is  bear  Saints'  day. 
I  believe  in  maintaining  old  traditions,  so 
I  harvested  their  hearts  instead.  I  will  tell 
you  about  it  some  time,  Jim,  but  now  I  must 
see  Beulah  Sands.  Jim  Randolph,  I've  saved 
her  and  her  father.  I've  made  them  a  round 
three  millions  and  a  strong  seven  millions 
for  myself." 

He  almost  yelled  it  as  he  rushed  away  and 
left  me  dazed,  stupefied.  A  moment,  and  I 
came  to.  Something  urged  me  to  follow 
him. 


A  S  I  passed  through  my  office  a  few  minutes 
later   I   heard    Bob's   voice   in    Beulah 
Sands's   office.    It  was  raised    in    passionate 
eloquence. 

'Yes,  Beulah,  I  have  done  it  single-handed. 
I  have  crucified  Camemeyer,  'Standard  Oil/ 
and  the  'System'  that  spiked  me  to  the  cross 
a  few  weeks  ago.  You  have  three  millions, 
and  I  have  seven.  Now  there  is  nothing  more 
but  for  you  to  go  home  to  your  father,  and  then 
come  back  to  me.  Back  to  me,  Beulah,  back 
to  me  to  be  my  wife!" 

He  stopped.  There  was  no  sound.  I 
waited;  then,  frightened,  I  stepped  to  the 
door  of  Beulah  Sands's  office.  Bob  was 
standing  just  inside  the  threshold,  where  he 
had  halted  to  give  her  the  glad  tidings.  She 
had  risen  from  her  desk  and  was  looking  at 
him  with  an  agonised  stare.  He  seemed 
to  be  transfixed  by  her  look,  the  wild  ecstasy 
of  the  outburst  of  love  yet  mirrored  in  his 
eyes.  She  was  just  saying  as  I  reached  the 
door: 

152 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH   133 

"Bob,  in  mercy's  name  tell  me  you  got  this 
money  fairly,  honourably." 

Bob  must  have  realised  for  the  first  time 
what  he  had  done.  He  did  not  speak.  He 
only  stared  into  her  eyes.  She  was  now  at 
his  side. 

"Bob,  you  are  unnerved,"  she  said;  "you 
have  been  through  a  terrible  ordeal.  For  an 
hour  I  have  been  reading  in  the  bulletins 
of  the  banks  and  trust  companies  that  have 
failed,  of  the  banking-houses  that  have  been 
ruined.  I  have  been  reading  that  you  did 
it ;  that  you  have  made  millions — and  I  knew 
it  was  for  me,  for  father,  but  in  the  midst  of 
my  joy,  my  gratitude,  my  love — for,  oh, 
Bob,  I  love  you,"  she  interrupted  herself 
passionately;  "it  seems  as  though  I  love 
you  beyond  the  capacity  of  a  human  heart  to 
love.  I  think  that  for  the  right  to  be  yours 
for  one  single  moment  of  this  life  I  would 
smilingly  endure  all  the  pains  and  miseries 
of  eternal  torture.  Yes,  Bob,  for  the  right 
to  have  you  call  me  yours  for  only  while  I 
heard  the  word,  I  would  do  anything,  Bob, 
anything  that  was  honourable." 

She  had  drawn  his  head  down  close  to  her 
face,  and  her  great  blue  eyes  searched  his  as 
though  they  would  go  to  his  very  soul,  She 


was  a  child  in  her  simple  appeal  for  him  to 
allow  her  to  see  his  heart,  to  see  that  there 
was  nothing  black  there. 

As  she  gazed,  her  beautiful  hands  played 
through  his  hair  as  do  a  mother's  through 
that  of  the  child  she  is  soothing  in  sickness. 

"Bob,  speak  to  me,  speak  to  me,"  she 
begged,  "tell  me  there  was  no  dishonour  in 
the  getting  of  those  millions.  Tell  me  no 
one  was  made  to  suffer  as  my  father  and  I 
have  suffered.  Tell  me  that  the  suicides 
and  the  convicts,  the  daughters  dragged  to 
shame  and  the  mothers  driven  to  the  mad- 
house as  a  result  of  this  panic,  cannot  be 
charged  to  anything  unfair  or  dishonourable 
that  you  have  done.  Bob,  oh,  Bob,  answer! 
Answer  no,  or  my  heart  will  break;  or  if, 
Bob,  you  have  made  a  mistake,  if  you  have 
done  that  which  in  your  great  desire  to  aid  me 
and  my  father  seemed  justifiable,  but  which 
you  now  see  was  wrong,  tell  it  to  me,  Bob 
dear,  and  together  we  will  try  to  undo  it. 
We  will  try  to  find  a  way  to  atone.  We  will 
give  the  millions  to  the  last,  last  penny  to 
those  upon  whom  you  have  brought  misery. 
Father's  loss  will  not  matter.  Together  we 
will  go  to  him  and  tell  him  what  we  have 
done,  what  we  have  lived  through,  tell  him  of 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    135 

our  mistake,  and  in  our  agony  he  will  forget 
his  own.  For  such  a  horror  has  my  father  of 
anything  dishonourable  that  he  will  embrace 
his  misery  as  happiness  when  he  knows  that 
his  teachings  have  enabled  his  daughter  to 
undo  this  great  wrong.  And  then,  Bob,  we 
will  be  married,  and  you  and  I  and  father 
and  mother  will  be  together,  and  be,  oh,  so 
happy,  and  we  will  begin  all  over  again." 

"Beulah,  stop;  in  the  name  of  God,  in 
the  name  of  your  love  for  me,  don't  say 
another  word.  There  is  a  limit  to  the 
capacity  of  a  man  to  suffer,  even  if  he  be  a 
great,  strong  brute  like  myself,  and,  Beulah, 
I  have  reached  that  limit.  The  day  has  been 
a  hard  one." 

His  voice  softened  and  became  as  a  tired 
child's. 

"I  must  go  out  into  the  hustle  of  the  street, 
into  the  din  and  sound,  and  get  down  my 
nerves  and  get  back  my  head.  Then  I  shall 
be  able  to  think  clear  and  true,  and  I  will  come 
back  to  you,  and  together  we  will  see  if  I  have 
done  anything  that  makes  me  unfit  to  touch 
the  cheek  and  the  hands  and  the  lips  of  the 
best  and  most  beautiful  woman  God  ever 
put  upon  earth.  Beulah,  you  know  I  would 
not  deceive  you  to  save  my  body  from  the 


136    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

fires  of  this  world,  and  my  soul  from  the 
torture  of  the  damned,  and  I  promise  you 
that  if  I  find  that  I  have  done  wrong,  what 
you  call  wrong,  what  your  father  would  call 
wrong,  I  will  do  what  you  say  to  atone." 

He  took  her  head  between  his  hands,  gently, 
reverently,  and  touching  his  lips  to  her  glorious 
golden  hair,  he  went  away. 

Beulah  Sands  turned  to  me.  "Please, 
Mr.  Randolph,  go  with  him.  He  is  soul- 
dazed.  One  can  never  tell  what  a  heart 
sorely  perplexed  will  prompt  its  owner  to  do. 
Often  in  the  night  when  I  have  got  myself 
into  a  fever  from  thinking  of  my  father's 
situation,  I  have  had  awful  temptations.  The 
agents  of  the  devil  seek  the  wretched  when 
none  of  those  they  love  are  by.  I  have  often 
thought  some  of  the  blackest  tragedies  of  the 
earth  might  have  been  averted  if  there  had 
been  a  true  friend  to  stand  at  the  wrung  one's 
elbow  at  the  fatal  minute  of  decision  and  point 
to  the  sun  behind,  just  when  the  black  ahead 
grew  unendurable.  Please  follow  Mr. 
Brownley  that  you  may  be  ready,  should  his 
awakening  to  what  he  has  done  become  un- 
bearable. Tell  him  the  dreaded  morrows  are 
never  as  terrible  actually  as  they  seem  in 
anticipation." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    137 

I  overtook  Bob  just  outside  the  office.  I 
did  not  speak  to  him,  for  I  realised  that  he 
was  in  no  mood  for  company.  I  dropped  in 
behind,  determined  that  I  would  not  lose 
sight  of  him.  It  was  almost  one  o'clock. 
Wall  Street  was  at  its  meridian  of  frenzy,  every 
one  on  a  wild  rush.  The  day's  doing  had 
packed  the  always-crowded  money  lane. 
The  newsboys  were  shouting  afternoon  edi- 
tions. "Terrible  panic  in  Wall  Street.  One 
man  against  millions.  Robert  Brownley  broke 
'the  Street.'  Made  twenty  millions  in  an 
hour.  Banks  failed.  Wreck  and  ruin  every- 
where. President  Snow  of  Asterfield  National 
a  suicide."  Bob  gave  no  sign  of  hearing.  He 
strode  with  a  slow,  measured  gait,  his  head 
erect,  his  eyes  staring  ahead  at  space,  a  man 
thinking,  thinking,  thinking  for  his  salvation. 
Many  hurrying  men  looked  at  him,  some  with 
an  expression  of  unutterable  hatred,  as  though 
they  wanted  to  attack  him.  Then  again  there 
were  those  who  called  him  by  name  with  a 
laugh  of  joy;  and  some  turned  to  watch  him 
in  curiosity.  It  was  easy  to  pick  the  wounded 
from  those  who  shared  in  his  victory,  and  from 
those  who  knew  the  frenzied  finance  buzz- 
saw  only  by  its  buzz.  Bob  saw  none.  Where 
could  he  be  going?  He  came  to  the  head 


138    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

of  the  street  of  coin  and  crime  and  crossed 
Broadway.  His  path  was  blocked  by  the 
fence  surrounding  old  Trinity's  churchyard. 
Grasping  the  pickets  in  either  hand  he  stared 
at  the  crumbling  headstones  of  those  guards- 
men of  Mammon  who  once  walked  the  earth 
and  fought  their  heart  battles,  as  he  was  walk- 
ing and  fighting,  but  who  now  knew  no  ten 
o'clock,  no  three,  who  looked  upon  the  stock- 
gamblers  and  dollar-trailers  as  they  looked 
upon  the  worms  that  honeycombed  their  head- 
stones' bases.  What  thoughts  went  through 
Bob  Brownley's  mind  only  his  Maker  knew. 
For  minutes  he  stood  motionless,  then  he 
walked  on  down  Broadway.  He  went  into  the 
Battery.  The  benches  were  crowded  with  that 
jetsam  and  flotsam  of  humanity  that  New 
York's  mighty  sewers  throw  in  armies  upon 
her  inland  beaches  at  every  sunrise:  Here  a 
sodden  brute  sleeping  off  a  prolonged  debauch, 
there  a  lad  whose  frankness  of  face  and 
homespun  clothes  and  bewildered  eyes  spelt, 
"from  the  farm  and  mother's  watchful  love." 
On  another  bench  an  Italian  woman  who  had 
a  half-dozen  future  dollar  kings  and  social 
queens  about  her,  and  whose  clothes  told  of 
the  immigrant  ship  just  into  port.  Bob 
Brownley  apparently  saw  none.  But  suddenly 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     139 

he  stopped.  Upon  a  bench  sat  a  sweet-faced 
mother  holding  a  sleeping  babe  in  her  arms, 
while  a  curly-pated  boy  nestled  his  head  in 
her  lap  and  slept  through  the  magic  lanes 
and  fairy  woods  of  dreamland.  The 
woman's  face  was  one  of  those  that  blend  the 
confidence  of  girlhood  with  the  uncertainty 
of  womanhood.  'Twas  a  pretty  face,  which 
had  been  plainly  tagged  by  its  Maker  for  a 
light-hearted  trip  through  this  world,  but  it 
had  been  seared  by  the  iron  of  the  city. 

"Mr.  Brownley—        She  started  to  rise. 

He  gently  pushed  her  back  with  a  "hush," 
unwilling  to  rob  the  sleepers  of  their  heaven. 

"What   are   you   doing   here,   Mrs. ?" 

He  halted. 

"Mrs.  Chase.  Mr.  Brownley,  when  I  went 
away  from  Randolph  &  Randolph's  office 
I  married  John  Chase;  you  may  remember 
him  as  delivery  clerk.  I  had  such  a  happy 
home  and  my  husband  was  so  good;  I  did 
not  have  to  typewrite  any  longer.  These 
are  our  two  children." 

"What  are  you  doing  here  ?" 

The  tears  sprang  to  her  eyes;  she  dropped 
them,  but  did  not  answer. 

"Don't  mind  me,  woman.  I,  too,  have 
hidden  hells  I  don't  want  the  world  to  see. 


140    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Don't  mind  me;  tell  me  your  story.  It  may 
do  you  good;  it  may  do  me  good;  yes,  it  may 
do  me  good." 

I  had  dropped  into  a  seat  a  few  feet  away. 
Both  were  too  much  occupied  with  their  own 
thoughts  to  notice  me  or  any  one  else.  I 
could  not  overhear  their  conversation,  but 
long  afterward,  when  I  mentioned  our  old 
stenographer,  Bessie  Brown,  to  Bob,  he  told 
me  of  the  incident  at  the  Battery.  Her 
husband,  after  their  marriage,  had  become 
infected  with  the  stock-gambling  microbe, 
the  microbe  that  gnaws  into  its  victim's 
mind  and  heart  day  and  night,  while  ever 
fiercer  grows  the  "get  rich,  get  rich"  fever. 
He  had  plunged  with  their  savings  and  had 
drawn  a  blank.  He  had  lost  his  position  in 
disgrace  and  had  landed  in  the  bucket-shop, 
the  sub-cellar  pit  of  the  big  Stock  Exchange 
hell.  From  there  a  week  before  he  had  been 
sent  to  prison  for  theft,  and  that  morning  she 
had  been  turned  into  the  street  by  her  landlord. 
I  saw  Bob  take  from  his  pocket  his  memo- 
randum-book, write  something  upon  a  leaf, 
tear  it  out  and  hand  it  to  the  woman,  touch 
his  hat,  and  before  she  could  stop  him,  stride 
away.  I  saw  her  look  at  the  paper,  clap 
her  hands  to  her  forehead,  look  at  the  paper 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    141 

again  and  at  the  retreating  form  of  Bob 
Brownley.  Then  I  saw  her,  yes,  there  in 
the  old  Battery  Park,  in  the  drizzling  rain 
and  under  the  eyes  of  all,  drop  upon  her 
knees  in  prayer.  How  long  she  prayed  I  do 
not  know.  I  only  know  that  as  I  followed 
Bob  I  looked  back  and  the  woman  was  still 
upon  her  knees.  I  thought  at  the  time  how 
queer  and  unnatural  the  whole  thing  seemed. 
Later,  I  learned  to  know  that  nothing  is  queer 
and  unnatural  in  the  world  of  human  suffering ; 
that  great  human  suffering  turns  all  that  is 
queer  and  unnatural  into  commonplace.  Next 
day  Bessie  Brown  came  to  our  office  to  see 
Bob.  Not  being  able  to  get  at  him  she  asked 
for  me. 

"Mr.  Randolph,  tell  me,  please,  what 
shall  I  do  with  this  paper?"  she  said.  "I 
met  Mr.  Brownley  in  the  Battery  yesterday. 
He  saw  I  was  in  distress  and  he  gave  me 
this,  but  I  cannot  believe  he  meant  it,"  and 
she  showed  me  an  order  on  Randolph  & 
Randolph  for  a  thousand  dollars.  I  cashed 
her  check  and  she  went  away. 

From  the  Battery  Bob  sought  the  wharves, 
the  Bowery,  Five  Points,  the  hothouses  of 
the  under-worldlings  of  America.  He  seemed 
bent  on  picking  out  the  haunts  of  misery 


142     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

in  the  misery-infested  metropolis  of  the  new 
world.  For  two  hours  he  tramped  and  I 
followed.  A  number  of  times  I  thought  to 
speak  to  him  and  try  to  win  him  from  his 
mood,  but  I  refrained.  I  could  see  there 
was  a  soul  battle  waging  and  I  realised  that 
upon  its  outcome  might  depend  Bob's  sal- 
vation. Some  seek  the  quiet  of  the  woods, 
the  soothing  rustle  of  the  leaves,  the  peace- 
ful ripple  of  the  brook  when  battling  for 
their  soul,  but  Bob's  woods  appeared  to  be 
the  shadowy  places  of  misery,  his  rustling 
leaves  the  hoarse  din  of  the  multitude,  and  his 
brook's  ripple  the  tears  and  tales  of  the  man- 
damned  of  the  great  city,  for  he  stopped  and 
conversed  with  many  human  derelicts  that 
he  met  on  his  course.  The  hand  of  the  clock 
on  Trinity's  steeple  pointed  to  four  as  we  again 
approached  the  office  of  Randolph  &  Ran- 
dolph. Bob  was  now  moving  with  a  long, 
hurried  stride,  as  though  consumed  with  a 
fever  of  desire  to  get  to  Beulah  Sands.  For 
the  last  fifteen  minutes  I  had  with  difficulty 
kept  him  in  sight.  Had  he  arrived  at  a 
decision,  and  if  so,  what  was  it?  I  asked 
myself  over  and  over  again  as  I  plowed 
through  the  crowds. 

Bob  went  straight  to  Beulah  Sands's  office, 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     143 

I  to  mine.  I  had  been  there  but  a  moment 
when  I  heard  deep,  guttural  groans.  I 
listened.  The  sound  came  louder  than 
before.  It  came  from  Beulah  Sands 's  office. 
With  a  bound  I  was  at  the  open  door.  My 
God,  the  sight  that  met  my  gaze!  It  haunts 
me  even  now  when  years  have  dulled  its 
vividness.  The  beautiful,  quiet,  gray  figure 
that  had  grown  to  be  such  a  familiar  picture 
to  Bob  and  me  of  late,  sat  at  the  flat  desk  in 
the  centre  of  the  room.  She  faced  the  door. 
Her  elbows  rested  on  the  desk;  in  her  hand 
was  an  afternoon  paper  that  she  had  evidently 
been  reading  when  Bob  entered.  God  knows 
how  long  she  had  been  reading  it  before  he 
came.  Bob  was  kneeling  at  the  side  of  her 
chair,  his  hands  clasped  and  uplifted  in  an 
agony  of  appeal  that  was  supplemented  by 
the  awful  groans.  His  face  showed  un- 
speakable terror  and  entreaty;  the  eyes  were 
bursting  from  their  sockets  and  were  riveted 
on  hers  as  those  of  a  man  in  a  dungeon  might 
be  fixed  upon  an  approaching  spectre  of  one 
whom  he  had  murdered.  His  chest  rose  and 
fell,  as  though  trying  to  burst  some  unseen 
bonds  that  were  crushing  out  his  life.  With 
every  breath  would  come  the  awful  groan 
that  had  first  brought  me  to  him.  Beulah 


144    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Sands  had  half  turned  her  face  until  her  eyes 
gazed  into  Bob's  with  a  sweet,  childish  per- 
plexity. I  looked  at  her,  surprised  that  one 
whom  I  had  always  seen  so  intelligently 
masterful  should  be  passive  in  the  face  of  such 
anguish.  Then,  horror  of  horrors!  I  saw 
that  there  was  something  missing  from  her 
great  blue  eyes.  I  looked;  gasped.  Could 
it  possibly  be  ?  With  a  bound  I  was  at  her 
side.  I  gazed  again  into  those  eyes  which 
that  morning  had  been  all  that  was  intelligent, 
all  that  was  godlike,  all  that  was  human. 
Their  soul,  their  life  was  gone.  Beulah 
Sands  was  a  dead  woman;  not  dead  in  body, 
but  in  soul;  the  magic  spark  had  fled.  She 
was  but  an  empty  shell — a  woman  of  living 
flesh  and  blood;  but  the  citadel  of  life  was 
empty,  the  mind  was  gone.  What  had  been 
a  woman  was  but  a  child.  I  passed  my 
hand  across  my  now  damp  forehead.  I  closed 
my  eyes  and  opened  them  again.  Bob's 
figure,  with  clasped,  uplifted  hands,  and 
bursting  eyes,  was  still  there.  There  still 
resounded  through  the  room  the  awful  gut- 
tural groans.  Beulah  Sands  smiled,  the  smile 
of  an  infant  in  the  cradle.  She  took  one 
beautiful  hand  from  the  paper  and  passed  it 
over  Bob's  bronzed  cheek,  just  as  the  infant 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     145 

touches  its  mother's  face  with  its  chubby 
fingers.  In  my  horror  I  almost  expected  to 
hear  the  purling  of  a  babe.  My  eyes  in  their 
perplexity  must  have  wandered  from  her 
face,  for  I  suddenly  became  aware  of  a  great 
black  head-line  spread  across  the  top  of  the 
paper  that  she  had  been  reading: 

-FRIDAY,  THE  13TH." 

And  beneath  in  one  of  the  columns : 

"  TERRIBLE  TRAGEDY  IN  VIRGINIA  " 

"THE  MOST  PROMINENT  CITIZEN  OF  THE 
STATE,  EX-UNITED  STATES  SENATOR 
AND  EX-GOVERNOR,  JUDGE  LEE  SANDS 
OF  SANDS  LANDING,  WHILE  TEMPO- 
RARILY INSANE  FROM  THE  LOSS  OF  HIS 
FORTUNE  AND  MILLIONS  OF  THE  FUNDS 
FOR  WHICH  HE  WAS  TRUSTEE,  CUT 
THE  THROAT  OF  HIS  INVALID  WIFE,  HIS 
DAUGHTER'S,  AND  THEN  HIS  OWN.  ALL 
THREE  DIED  INSTANTLY." 

In  another  column: 

"  ROBERT  BROWNLEY  CREATES  THE  MOST 
DISASTROUS  PANIC  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF 
WALL  STREET  AND  SPREADS  WRECK 
AND  RUIN  THROUGHOUT  THE  COUNTRY." 


146    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

A  hideous  picture  seared  its  every  light 
and  shade  on  my  mind,  through  my  heart, 
into  all  my  soul,  A  frenzied-finance  harvest 
scene  with  its  gory  crop;  in  the  centre  one 
living-dead,  part  of  the  picture,  yet  the  ghost 
left  to  haunt  the  painters,  one  of  whom  was 
already  cowering  before  the  black  and  bloody 
canvas. 

Well  did  the  word-artist  who  wrote  over 
the  door  of  the  madhouse,  "Man  can  suffer 
only  to  the  limit,  then  he  shall  know  peace," 
understand  the  wondrous  wisdom  of  his  God. 
Beulah  Sands  had  gone  beyond  her  limit 
and  was  at  peace. 

The  awful  groaning  stopped  and  an  ashen 
pallor  spread  over  Bob  Brownley's  face. 
Before  I  could  catch  him  he  rolled  backward 
upon  the  floor  as  dead.  Bob  Brownley, 
too,  had  gone  beyond  his  limit.  I  bent  over 
him  and  lifted  his  head,  while  the  sweet 
woman-child  knelt  and  covered  his  face  with 
kisses,  calling  in  a  voice  like  that  of  a  tiny 
girl  speaking  to  her  doll,  "Bob,  my  Bob, 
wake  up,  wake  up;  your  Beulah  wants  you." 
As  I  placed  my  hand  upon  Bob's  heart  and  felt 
its  beats  grow  stronger,  as  I  listened  to  Beulah 
Sands 's  childish  voice,  joyously  confident, 
as  it  called  upon  the  one  thing  left  of  her  old 


world,  some  of  my  terror  passed.  In  its  place 
came  a  great  mellowing  sense  of  God's  mar- 
vellous wisdom.  I  thought  gratefully  of  my 
mother's  always  ready  argument  that  the 
law  of  all  laws,  of  God  and  nature,  is  that  of 
compensation.  I  had  allowed  Bob's  head 
to  sink  until  it  rested  in  Beulah's  lap,  and 
from  his  calm  and  steady  breathing  I  could 
see  that  he  had  safely  passed  a  crisis,  that  at 
least  he  was  not  in  the  clutches  of  death,  as 
I  had  at  first  feared. 

Bob  slept.  Beulah  Sands  ceased  her  call- 
ing and  with  a  smile  raised  her  fingers  to  her 
lips  and  softly  said,  "Hush,  my  Bob's  asleep." 
Together  we  held  vigil  over  our  sleeping 
lover  and  friend,  she  with  the  happiness  of  a 
child  who  had  no  fear  of  the  awakening, 
I  with  a  silent  terror  of  what  should  come  next. 
I  had  seen  one  mind  wafted  to  the  unknown 
that  day.  Was  it  to  have  a  companion  to 
cheer  and  solace  it  on  its  far  journey  to  the 
great  beyond  ?  How  long  we  waited  Bob's 
awakening  I  could  not  tell.  The  clock's 
hands  said  an  hour;  it  seemed  to  me  an  age. 
At  last  his  magnificent  physique,  his  un- 
poisoned  blood  and  splendid  brain  pulled 
him  through  to  his  new  world  of  mind  and 
heart  torture.  His  eyelids  lifted.  He  looked 


148    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

at  me,  then  at  Beulah  Sands,  with  eyes  so 
sad,  so  awful  in  their  perplexed  mournfulness, 
that  I  almost  wished  they  had  never  opened, 
or  had  opened  to  let  me  see  the  childlike  look 
that  now  shone  from  the  girl's.  His  gaze 
finally  rested  on  her  and  his  lips  murmured 
"Beulah." 

;<  There,  Bob,  I  thought  you  would  know  it 
was  time  to  wake  up."  She  bent  over  and 
kissed  him  on  the  eyes  again  and  again  with 
the  loving  ardour  a  child  bestows  upon  its  pets. 

He  slowly  rose  to  his  feet.  I  could  see 
from  his  eyes  and  the  shudder  that  went  over 
him  as  he  caught  sight  of  the  paper  on  the 
desk  that  he  was  himself;  that  memory  of 
the  happenings  of  the  day  had  not  fled  in  his 
sleep.  He  rose  to  his  full  height,  his  head 
went  up,  and  his  shoulders  back,  but  only 
from  habit  and  for  an  instant.  Then  he 
folded  Beulah  Sands  to  his  breast  and  dropped 
his  head  upon  her  shoulder.  He  sobbed 
like  a  father  with  the  corpse  of  his  child. 

"Why,  Bob,  my  Bob,  is  this  the  way  you 
treat  your  Beulah  when  she's  let  you  sleep 
so  your  beautiful  eyes  would  be  pretty  for  the 
wedding  ?  Is  this  the  way  to  act  before  this 
kind  man  who  has  come  to  take  us  to  the 
church?  Naughty,  naughty  Bob." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     149 

I  looked  at  her,  at  Bob,  in  horror.  I  was 
beginning  to  realise  the  absolute  deadness 
of  this  woman.  From  the  first  look  I  had 
known  that  her  mind  had  fled,  but  knowledge 
is  not  always  realisation.  She  did  not  even 
know  who  I  was.  Her  mind  was  dead  to  all 
but  the  man  she  loved,  the  man  who  through 
all  those  long  days  of  her  suffering  she  had 
silently  worshiped.  To  all  but  him  she  was 
new-born. 

At  the  sound  of  "wedding,"  "church,'* 
Bob's  head  slowly  rose  from  her  shoulder. 
I  saw  his  decision  the  instant  I  caught  his 
eye;  I  realised  the  uselessness  of  opposing 
it,  and,  sick  at  heart  and  horrified,  I  listened 
as  he  said  in  a  voice  now  calm  and  soothing 
as  that  of  a  father  to  his  child,  "Yes,  Beulah, 
my  darling,  I  have  slept  too  long.  Bob  has 
been  naughty,  but  we  will  make  up  for  lost 
time.  Get  your  hat  and  cloak  and  we'll 
hurry  to  the  church  or  we  will  be  late." 

With  a  laugh  of  joy  she  followed  him  to 
the  closet  where  hung  the  little  gray  turban 
and  the  pretty  gray  jacket.  He  took  them 
from  their  peg  and  gave  them  to  her. 

"Not  a  word,  Jim,"  he  bade  me.  "In 
the  name  of  God  and  all  our  friendship,  not 
a  word.  Beulah  Sands  will  be  my  wife  as 


150    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

soon  as  I  can  find  a  minister  to  marry  us. 
It  is  best,  best.  It  is  right.  It  is  as  God 
would  have  it,  or  I  am  not  capable  of  knowing 
right  from  wrong.  Anyway,  it  is  what  will 
be.  She  has  no  father,  no  mother,  no  sister, 
no  one  to  protect  and  shield  her.  The  'Sys- 
tem* has  robbed  her  of  all  in  life,  even  of  her- 
self, of  everything,  Jim,  but  me.  I  must  try 
to  win  her  back  for  herself,  or  to  make  her 
new  world  a  happy  one — a  happy  one  for 
her." 


CHAPTER  VII 

A  N  OLD  gambler,  whose  life  had  been 
7  spent  listening  to  the  rattle  of  the 
drop-in-bound-out  little  roulette  ball,  was 
told  by  a  fellow  victim,  as  his  last  dollar 
went  to  the  relentless  tiger's  maw,  that  the 
keeper's  foot  was  upon  an  electric  button 
which  enabled  him  to  make  the  ball  drop 
where  his  stake  was  not.  He  simply  said, 
"Thank  God.  I  thought  that  prince  of 
cheats,  Fate,  who  all  through  life  has  had  his 
foot  on  the  button  of  my  game,  was  the  one 
who  did  the  trick."  Long  suffering  had 
driven  the  old  gambler  to  the  loser's  bible, 
Philosophy!  Cheated  by  man's  device,  he 
knew  he  had  some  chance  of  getting  even; 
but  Fate  he  could  not  combat. 

Bob  Brownley  had  thought  himself  in 
hard  luck  when  his  eyes  opened  to  the  fact 
that  he  had  been  robbed  by  means  of  dice 
loaded  by  man,  but  when  Fate  pressed  the 
button  he  saw  that  his  man-made  hell  was 
but  a  feeble  imitation,  and — was  satisfied, 
as  whoever  knows  the  game  of  life  is  satisfied, 

151 


152    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

because — he  must  be.  Bob's  strong  head 
bowed,  his  iron  will  bent,  and  meekly  his  soul 
murmured,  "Thy  will  be  done." 

That  night  he  married  Beulah  Sands. 
The  minister  who  united  the  grown-up  man 
and  the  woman  who  was  as  a  new-born 
babe  saw  nothing  extraordinary  in  the  match. 
He  murmured  to  me,  who  acted  as  best  man 
to  the  groom,  maid  of  honour  to  the  bride, 
and  father  and  mother  to  both,  "We  see 
strange  sights,  we  ministers  of  the  great  city, 
Mr.  Randolph.  The  sweet  little  lady  ap- 
pears to  be  a  trifle  scared."  My  explanation 
that  she  and  Mr.  Brownley  were  the  only 
survivors  of  the  awful  tragedies  of  the  day 
was  sufficient.  He  was  satisfied  when  he  got 
no  other  response  to  his  question,  "Do  you 
take  this  man  to  be  your  wedded  husband?" 
than  a  sweet  childish  smile  as  she  snuggled 
closer  to  Bob. 

Bob  and  his  bride  went  South  to  his  mother 
and  sisters  the  next  day.  He  left  to  me  the 
settlement  of  his  trades.  He  instructed  me 
to  set  aside  $3,000,000  profits  for  Beulah 
Sands-Brownley,  and  insisted  that  I  pay 
from  the  balance  the  notes  he  had  given 
me  a  few  weeks  before.  There  remained 
something  over  $5,000,000  for  himself. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    153 

The  leading  Wall  Street  paper,  in  its 
preachment  on  the  panic,  wound  up  with: 

"Wall  Street  has  lived  through  many  black  Fridays.  Some 
of  them  have  been  thirteenth-of-the-month  Fridays,  but  no 
Friday  yet  marked  from  the  calendar,  no  Saturday,  Monday, 
Tuesday,  Wednesday,  or  Thursday  yet  garnered  to  the  store- 
house of  the  past  was  ever  more  jubilantly  welcomed  by  his 
Satanic  Majesty  than  yesterday.  We  pray  heaven  no  com- 
ing day  may  be  ordained  to  go  against  yesterday's  record  for 
tigerish  cruelty  and  awful  destruction.  It  is  rumoured  that 
Mr.  Brownley  of  Randolph  &  Randolph,  either  for  himself  or 
his  clients  cleared  twenty-five  millions  of  profit.  We  believe 
that  this  estimate  is  low.  The  losses  coming  through  Rob- 
ert Brownley 's  terrible  onslaught  must  have  run  over  five 
hundred  millions.  Wall  Street  and  the  country  will  do  well 
to  take  the  moral  of  yesterday's  market  to  their  heart.  It 
is  this:  The  concentration  of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  few 
Americans  is  a  menace  to  our  financial  structure.  It  is  the 
unanimous  opinion  of  'the  Street'  that  Robert  Brownley  could 
never  have  succeeded  in  battering  down  the  price  of  Sugar  in 
the  very  teeth  of  the  Camemeyer  and  Standard  Oil  support 
as  he  did  yesterday,  without  a  cash  backing  of  from  fifty 
to  one  hundred  millions.  If  a  vast  aggregation  of  money 
owners  deliberately  place  themselves  behind  an  onslaught 
such  as  was  so  successfully  made  yesterday,  why  can  that 
slaughter  not  be  repeated  at  any  time,  on  any  stock,  and 
against  the  support  of  any  backing?" 

When  I  read  this  and  listened  to  talk  along 
the  same  lines,  I  was  puzzled.  I  could 
not  for  the  life  of  me  see  where  Bob  Brownley 


154    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

could  have  got  five  to  ten  millions'  back- 
ing for  such  a  raid,  much  less  fifty  to  a  hun- 
dred. Yet  I  was  forced  to  confess  that  he 
must  have  had  some  tremendous  backing; 
else  how  could  he  have  done  what  I  had  seen 
him  do  ? 

Bob  left  his  wife  at  his  mother's  house 
while  he  went  to  Sands  Landing  to  the 
funeral.  After  the  old  judge  and  his  victims 
had  been  laid  away  and  the  relatives  had 
gathered  in  the  library  of  the  great  white 
Sands  mansion,  he  explained  their  kins- 
woman's condition  and  told  them  that  she 
was  his  wife.  He  insisted  upon  paying  all 
Judge  Sands's  debts,  over  $500,000  of  which 
was  owed  to  members  of  the  Sands  family 
for  whom  he  had  been  trustee.  Before  he 
went  back  to  his  mother's,  Bob  had  turned 
a  great  calamity  into  an  occasion  for  some- 
thing near  rejoicing.  Judge  Sands  and  his 
family  were  very  dear  to  the  people  of  the 
section,  but  his  misfortune  had  threatened 
such  wide-spread  ruin  that  the  unlooked- 
for  recovery  of  a  million  and  a  half  was  a 
godsend  that  made  for  happiness. 

Two  days  after  the  funeral  Bob's  dearest 
hope  fled.  He  had  ordered  all  things  at 
the  Sands  plantation  put  in  their  every-day 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    155 

condition.  Beulah  SanoVs  uncles,  aunts,  and 
cousins  had  arranged  to  welcome  her  and 
to  try  by  every  means  in  their  power  to  coax 
back  her  lost  mind.  They  assured  Bob 
that,  barring  the  absence  of  Beulah 's  father, 
mother,  and  sister,  there  would  not  be  a 
rnemory-recaller  missing.  Bob  and  his  wife 
landed  from  the  river  packet  at  the  foot  of 
the  driveway,  which  led  straight  from  the 
landing  to  the  vine-covered,  white-pillared 
portico.  Bob's  agony  must  have  been  awful 
when  his  wife  clapped  her  hands  in  childish 
joy  as  she  exclaimed,  "Oh,  Bob,  what  a 
pretty  place!"  She  gave  no  sign  that  she 
had  ever  seen  the  great  entrance,  through 
which  she  had  come  and  gone  from  her 
babyhood.  Bob  took  her  to  the  library,  to 
her  mother's  room,  to  her  own,  to  the  nursery 
where  were  the  dolls  and  toys  of  her  childhood, 
but  there  came  no  sign  of  recognition,  noth- 
ing but  childish  pleasure.  She  looked  at 
her  aunts  and  uncles  and  the  cousins  with 
whom  she  had  spent  her  life,  bewildered 
at  finding  so  many  strangers  in  the  other- 
wise quiet  place.  As  a  last  hope,  they  led 
in  her  old  black  foster-mother,  who  had 
nursed  her  in  babyhood,  who  was  the  com- 
panion of  her  childhood  and  the  pet  of  her 


156    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

womanhood.  There  was  not  a  dry  eye  in 
the  library  when  she  met  the  old  mammy's 
outburst  of  joy  with  the  puzzled  gaze  of 
the  child  who  does  not  understand.  The 
grief  of  the  old  negress  was  pitiful  as  she 
realised  that  she  was  a  stranger  to  her  "honey 
bird."  The  child  seemed  perplexed  at  her 
grief.  It  was  plain  to  all  that  the  Sands  home 
meant  nothing  to  the  last  of  the  judge's  family. 

Bob  brought  her  back  to  New  York  and 
besought  the  aid  of  the  medical  experts  of 
America  and  of  the  Old  World  to  regain 
that  which  had  been  recalled  by  its  Maker. 
The  doctors  were  fascinated  with  this  new 
phase  of  mind  blight,  for  in  some  particulars 
Beulah's  case  was  unlike  any  known  in- 
stances, but  none  gave  hope.  All  agreed 
that  some  wire  connecting  heart  and  brain 
had  burned  out  when  the  cruel  "System" 
threw  on  a  voltage  beyond  the  wire's  capacity 
to  transmit.  All  agreed  that  the  woman- 
child  wife  would  never  grow  older  unless 
through  some  mental  eruption  beyond  human 
power  to  produce.  Some  of  the  medical 
men  pointed  to  one  possibility,  but  that  one 
was  too  terrible  for  Bob  to  entertain. 

The  first  anniversary  of  their  marriage 
found  Bob  and  his  wife  settled  in  their  new 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    157 

Fifth  Avenue  mansion.  He  had  bought 
and  torn  down  two  old  houses  between  Forty- 
second  and  Forty-third  Streets  and  had  erected 
a  palace,  the  inside  of  which  was  unique 
among  all  New  York's  unusual  structures. 
The  first  and  second  floors  were  all  that 
refined  taste  and  unlimited  expenditure  of 
money  could  produce.  Nothing  on  those 
splendid  floors  told  of  the  strange  things 
above.  A  sedate  luxury  pervaded  the 
drawing-rooms,  library,  and  dining-room. 
Bob  said  to  me,  in  taking  me  through  them, 
"Some  day,  Jim,  Beulah  may  recover,  may 
come  back  to  me,  and  I  want  to  have  every- 
thing as  she  would  wish,  everything  as  she 
would  have  had  it  if  the  curse  had  never 
come."  The  third  floor  was  Beulah's.  A 
child's  dainty  bedroom;  two  nurses'  rooms 
adjoining;  a  nursery,  with  a  child's  small 
schoolroom  and  a  big  playroom,  with 
dolls  and  doll  houses,  child's  toys  of  every 
description  in  abandon,  as  though  their  owner 
were  in  fact  but  a  few  years  old.  Across 
the  hall  were  three  offices,  exact  duplicates 
of  mine,  Bob's,  and  Beulah  Sands's  at  Ran- 
dolph &  Randolph's.  When  I  first  saw 
them  it  was  with  difficulty  that  I  brought 
myself  to  realise  that  I  was  not  where  the 


158    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

gruesome  happenings  of  a  year  before  had 
taken  place.  Bob  had  reproduced  to  the 
minutest  details  our  down-town  workshop. 
Standing  in  the  door  of  Beulah  Sands's 
office  I  faced  the  flat  desk  at  which  she  had 
sat  the  afternoon  when  I  first  saw  that  hideous 
result  of  the  work  of  the  "System."  I  could 
almost  see  the  little  gray  figure  holding  the 
afternoon  paper.  In  horror  my  eyes  sought 
the  floor  at  the  side  of  the  chair  in  search  of 
Bob's  agonised  face  and  uplifted  hands. 
As  I  stood  for  the  first  time  in  the  middle 
of  Bob's  handiwork,  I  seemed  to  hear  again 
those  awful  groans. 

"Jim,"  Bob  said,  "I  have  a  haunting 
idea  that  some  day  Beulah  will  wake  and 
look  around  and  think  she  has  been  but  a 
few  minutes  asleep.  If  she  should,  she  must 
have  nothing  to  disabuse  her  mind  until  we 
break  the  news  to  her.  I  have  instructed 
her  nurses,  one  or  the  other  of  whom  never 
loses  sight  of  her  night  or  day,  to  win  her 
to  the  habit  of  spending  her  time  at  her  old 
desk;  I  have  told  them  always  to  be  pre- 
pared for  her  awakening,  and  when  it  comes 
they  are  instantly  to  shut  off  the  rest  of  the 
floor  and  house  until  I  can  get  to  her.  Here 
comes  Beulah  now." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    159 

Out  of  the  nursery  came  a  laughing,  happy 
child- woman.  In  spite  of  her  finely  devel- 
oped, womanly  figure,  which  had  lost  noth- 
ing of  its  wonderful  beauty,  and  the  exquisite 
face  and  golden-brown  hair  and  great  blue 
eyes,  which  were  as  fascinating  as  on  the  day 
she  first  entered  the  offices  of  Randolph  & 
Randolph;  in  spite  of  the  close-fitting 
gray  gown  with  dainty  turned-over  lace  collar, 
I  could  hardly  bring  myself  to  believe  that 
she  was  anything  but  a  young  child.  With 
an  eager  look  and  a  happy  laugh  she  went 
to  Bob  and  throwing  her  arms  about  his 
neck,  covered  his  face  with  kisses. 

"Good  Bob  has  come  back  to  play  with 
Beulah,"  she  said,  "She  knew  he  would. 
They  told  Beulah  Bob  had  gone  away  to 
the  woods  to  gather  pretty  flowers.  Beulah 
knew  if  Bob  had  gone  to  the  woods  he  would 
have  taken  Beulah  with  him.  Now  Bob 
must  play  school  with  Beulah."  She  sat 
at  her  desk  and  opened  her  child's  school- 
book.  With  mock  severity  she  said,  "Bob, 
c-a-t.  What  does  it  spell?"  For  half  an 
hour  Bob  sat  and  played  scholar  and  teacher 
by  turns  with  all  the  patience  of  a  fond 
father.  With  difficulty  I  kept  back  the  tears 
the  sad  sight  brought  to  my  eyes. 


160    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

For  the  first  year  of  Bob's  marriage  we 
saw  but  little  of  him  at  the  office.  The 
Exchange  saw  less.  He  had  wandered  in 
upon  the  floor  two  or  three  times,  but  did 
no  business  and  seemed  to  take  but  little 
interest. 

"The  Street"  knew  Bob  had  married  the 
daughter  of  Judge  Lee  Sands,  the  victim 
of  Tom  Reinhart's  cold-blooded  Seaboard 
Air  Line  deal.  Otherwise  it  knew  nothing 
of  the  affair.  His  friends  never  met  his 
wife.  Occasionally  they  would  pass  the 
Brownley  carriage  on  the  avenue  or  in  the 
park  and,  taking  it  for  granted  that  the 
beautiful  woman  was  Mrs.  Brownley,  they 
thought  Bob  a  lucky  fellow.  It  seemed 
quite  natural  that  his  wife  should  choose 
seclusion  after  the  awful  tragedy  at  her  home 
in  Virginia.  But  they  could  not  understand 
why,  with  such  cause  for  mourning,  the 
exquisite  figure  beside  Bob  in  the  victoria 
should  always  be  garbed  in  gray.  After  a 
while  it  was  whispered  that  there  was  some- 
thing wrong  in  Bob's  household.  Then  his 
friends  and  acquaintances  ceased  to  whisper 
or  to  think  of  his  affairs.  With  all  New 
York's  bad  points — and  they  are  as  plen- 
tiful as  her  church  spires  and  charity  bazaars 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    161 

— she  has  one  offsetting  virtue.  If  a  dweller 
in  her  midst  chooses  to  let  New  York  alone, 
New  York  is  willing  to  reciprocate.  In  her 
most  crowded  fashionable  districts  a  person 
may  come  and  go  for  a  lifetime,  and  none 
in  the  block  in  which  he  dwells  will  know 
when  his  coming  and  going  ceases.  When 
a  New  Yorker  reads  in  his  newspaper  of  the 
man  who  lives  next  door  to  him,  "murdered 
and  his  body  discovered  by  the  gas  man" 
or  the  tax  collector,  the  butcher  or  the  baker, 
as  the  case  may  be,  he  never  thinks  he  may 
have  been  remiss  in  his  neighbourly  duties. 
There  is  no  such  word  as  "neighbour"  in 
the  New  York  City  dictionary.  It  may 
have  been  there  once,  but,  if  so,  it  was  long 
ago  used  as  a  stake  for  the  barbed-wire 
fence  of  exclusive  keep-your-distance-we-keep- 
our-distance-until-we-know-youness.  It  is 
told  of  a  minister  from  the  rural  districts, 
an  old-fashioned  American,  who  came  to 
New  York  to  take  charge  of  a  parish,  that  he 
started  out  to  make  his  calls  and  was  seized 
in  the  hall  of  what  in  civilisation  would  have 
been  his  next-door  neighbour.  He  was  rushed 
away  to  Bellevue  for  examination  as  to  sanity. 
The  verdict  was:  "Insane.  Had  no  letter 
of  introduction  and  was  not  in  the  set." 


162    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Shortly  after  the  first  anniversary  of  his 
wedding  Bob  gave  up  his  office  with  Ran- 
dolph &  Randolph  and  opened  one  for  him- 
self. He  explained  that  he  was  giving  up 
his  commission  business  to  devote  all  his 
time  to  personal  trading.  With  the  opening 
of  his  new  office  he  again  became  the  most 
active  man  on  the  floor.  His  trading  was 
intermittent.  For  weeks  he  would  not  be 
seen  at  the  Exchange  or  on  "the  Street." 
Then  he  would  return  and,  after  executing 
a  series  of  brilliant  trades,  which  were  in- 
variably successful,  he  would  again  disappear. 
He  soon  became  known  as  the  luckiest  opera- 
tor in  Wall  Street,  and  the  beginning  of  his 
every  new  deal  was  the  signal  for  his  fast- 
growing  following  to  tag  on. 

From  time  to  time  I  learned  that  Beulah 
Sands  was  making  no  real  improvement, 
though  in  some  details  she  had  learned  as 
a  child  learns.  But  there  was  no  indication 
that  she  would  ever  regain  her  lost  mind. 

Strange  stories  of  Bob's  doings  began 
to  seep  into  my  office.  For  long  periods  he 
would  disappear.  Neither  the  nurses  in  charge 
of  his  wife,  nor  his  brother,  mother,  and  sisters, 
for  whom  he  had  purchased  a  mansion  a 
few  blocks  above  his  own,  would  hear  a 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     163 

word  from  him.  Then  he  would  return 
as  suddenly  as  he  had  disappeared,  and  his 
wild  eyes  and  haggard  face  would  tell  of  a 
prolonged  and  desperate  soul  struggle.  He 
drank  often  now,  a  habit  he  had  never  before 
indulged  in. 

For  ten  days  before  the  second  anniversary 
of  his  marriage  he  had  been  missing.  On 
the  morning  of  the  anniversary  he  appeared 
at  the  Exchange,  wild-eyed  and  dare-devil 
reckless.  The  market  had  been  advancing 
for  weeks  and  was  at  a  high  level.  Tom 
Reinhart  and  his  branch  of  the  "System" 
were  working  out  a  new  fleecing  of  the  pub- 
lic in  Union  and  Northern  Pacific.  At  the 
strike  of  the  gong  Bob  took  possession  of 
the  Union  Pacific  pole  and  in  thirty  minutes 
had  precipitated  a  panic  by  his  merciless 
selling.  Our  house  was  heavily  interested 
in  the  Pacifies,  although  not  in  connection 
with  Reinhart  and  his  crowd.  As  soon  as 
I  got  word  that  Bob  was  the  cause  of  the 
slaughter,  I  rushed  over  to  the  Exchange 
and  working  my  way  into  the  crowd,  I  begged 
a  word  with  him.  He  had  broken  both 
stocks  over  fifty  points  a  share  and  the  panic 
was  raging  through  the  room.  He  glared 
at  me,  but  finally  followed  me  out  into  the 


164    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

lobby.  At  first  he  would  not  heed  my  ap- 
peal, but  finally  he  said,  "Jim,  it  is  too  bad 
to  let  up.  I  had  determined  to  rub  this 
devilish  institution  off  the  map,  but  if  it  really 
is  a  case  of  injury  to  the  house,  it's  my  oppor- 
tunity to  do  something  for  you  who  have 
done  so  much  for  me,  so  here  goes."  He 
threw  himself  into  the  Union  Pacific  crowd, 
first  giving  an  order  to  a  group  of  his  brokers, 
who  jumped  for  a  number  of  other  poles. 
Almost  instantly  the  panic  was  stayed  and 
stocks  were  bounding  upward  two  to  five 
points  at  a  leap.  Bob  continued  buying 
Union  Pacific  and  his  brokers  other  stocks 
in  unlimited  quantities.  Nothing  like  such 
a  quick  turn  of  the  market  had  been  seen 
before.  His  power  to  absorb  stocks  seemed 
to  be  boundless.  It  was  estimated  that 
personally  and  through  his  brokers  he  bought 
over  half  a  million  shares  before  he  joined 
me  and  left  the  Exchange. 

I  looked  at  him  in  wonderment.  "Bob, 
I  cannot  understand  you,"  I  said  at  last  as 
we  turned  out  of  Broad  Street  into  Wall. 
"It  seems  as  if  you  work  with  magic.  Every- 
thing you  touch  turns  to  gold." 

He  wheeled  on  me.  "Yes,  Jim,  you  are 
right.  Gold,  heartless,  soulless  gold.  But 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    165 

what  is  the  dross  good  for  ?  What  is  it  good 
for  to  me?  To-day  I  suppose  I  have  made 
the  biggest  one-man  killing  in  the  history 
of  'the  Street.'  I  must  be  an  easy  twenty- 
five  millions  richer  in  gold  than  I  was  this 
morning,  and  I  had  enough  then  to  dam 
the  East  River  and  a  good  section  of  the 
North.  But  tell  me,  Jim,  tell  me,  what  can 
it  buy  in  this  world  that  I  have  not  got?  I 
had  health  and  happiness,  perfect  health, 
pure  happiness,  when  I  did  not  have  a  thou- 
sand all  told.  Now  I  have  fifty  millions, 
and  I  know  how  to  get  fifty  or  five  hundred 
and  fifty  more  any  time  I  care  to  take  them, 
and  I  have  only  physical  and  mental  hell. 
No  beggar  in  all  the  world  is  so  poor  in  hap- 
piness as  I.  Tell  me,  tell  me,  Jim,  in  the 
name  of  God,  if  there  is  one — for  already 
the  game  of  gold  is  robbing  me  of  my  faith 
in  God — where  can  I  buy  a  little,  just  a  little 
happiness  with  all  this  cursed  yellow  dirt? 
What  will  it  get  me  in  the  next  world,  Jim 
Randolph,  what  will  it  get  me?  If  I  had 
died  when  I  was  poor,  I  think  you  will  agree 
with  me  that,  if  there  is  a  heaven,  I  should 
have  stood  an  even  chance  of  getting  there. 
Now  on  a  day  like  to-day,  when  you  see 
the  results  of  my  work,  the  results  of  my 


166    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

handling  of  unlimited  gold,  you  must  agree 
that  if  I  were  taken  off  I  should  stand  more 
than  an  even  show  of  landing  in  hell  where  the 
sulphur  is  thickest  and  the  flames  are  hottest." 

We  were  at  the  entrance  of  Randolph  & 
Randolph's  office  as  he  poured  out  this  ter- 
rible torrent  of  bitterness.  He  glared  at 
me  as  a  dungeon  prisoner  might  glare  at  his 
keeper  for  his  answer  to  "Where  can  I  find 
liberty?"  I  had  no  words  to  answer  him. 
As  I  npted  the  awful  changes  his  new  life 
was  making  in  every  line  of  his  face,  the 
rigid  hardness,  the  haunted,  nervous  look 
of  desperation,  which  seemed  a  forerunner 
of  madness,  I  could  not  see,  either,  where 
his  millions  brought  any  happiness.  His 
hair,  which  once  was  smooth  and  orderly, 
hung  over  his  forehead  in  an  unparted  mass 
of  tangled  curls,  and  here  and  there  showed 
a  streak  of  white.  Bob  Brownley  was  still 
handsome,  even  more  fascinating  than  before 
the  mercury  entered  his  soul,  but  it  was  that 
wild,  awful  beauty  of  the  caged  lion,  lashing 
himself  into  madness  with  memories  of  his 
lost  freedom. 

"Jim,"  he  went  on,  when  he  saw  I  could 
not  answer,  "I  guess  you  don't  know  where 
I  can  swap  the  yellow  mud  for  balm  of 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    167 

Gilead.  I  won't  bother  you  with  my  troubles 
any  longer.  I  will  go  up-town  and  see  the 
little  girl  whose  happiness  Tom  Reinhart 
needed  in  his  business.  I  will  go  up  and 
show  her  the  pictures  in  this  week's  Collier's 
of  the  fine  hospital  for  incurables  that  Rein- 
hart  has  so  generously  and  nobly  built  at 
a  cost  of  two  and  a  half  millions!  The 
little  girl  may  think  better  of  Reinhart  when 
she  knows  that  her  father's  money  was  put 
to  such  good  use.  Who  knows  but  the 
great  finance  king  may  dedicate  it  as  the 
'Judge  Lee  Sands  Home'  and  carve  over 
the  entrance  a  bas-relief  of  her  father,  mother, 
and  sister  with  Hope,  Faith,  and  Charity 
coming  from  the  mouths  of  their  hanging 
severed  heads?" 

Bob  Brownley  laughed  a  horrible  ringing 
laugh  as  he  uttered  these  awful  words.  Then 
he  beat  his  hand  down  on  my  shoulders  as 
he  said  in  a  hoarse  voice,  "Jim,  but  for  you 
I  should  have  had  crimps  in  that  jackal 
philanthropist's  soul  by  now  and  in  the  souls 
of  his  kind.  But  never  mind.  He  will  keep ; 
he  will  surely  keep  until  I  get  to  him.  Every 
day  he  lives  he  will  be  fitter  for  the  crimping. 
Within  the  short  two  years  since  he  finished 
grilling  Judge  Sands's  soul,  he  has  put 


168    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

himself  in  better  form  to  appreciate  his 
reward.  I  see  by  the  press  that  at  last  his  aris- 
tocratic wife  has  gold-cured  Newport  of  its 
habit  of  dating  back  the  name  Reinhart  to  her 
scullionhood,  and  it  has  taken  her  into  the 
high-instep  circle.  I  read  the  other  day  of  his 
daughter's  marriage  to  some  English  nob,  and 
of  the  discovery  of  the  ancient  Reinhart  family 
tree  and  crest  with  the  mailed  hand  and  two- 
edged  dirk  and  the  vulture  rampant,  and  the 
motto,  *  Who  strikes  in  the  back  strikes  often.'  ' 

He  left  me  with  his  laugh  still  ringing  in  my 
ears.  I  shuddered  as  I  passed  under  the  old 
black-and-gold  sign  my  uncle  and  my  father 
had  nailed  over  the  office  entrance  in  an  age 
now  dead,  an  age  when  Wall  Street  men  talked 
of  honour  and  gold,  not  gold  and  more  gold. 

In  telling  my  wife  of  the  day's  happenings 
I  could  not  refrain  from  giving  vent  to  the 
feelings  that  consumed  me.  "Kate,  Bob 
will  surely  do  something  awful  one  of  these 
days.  I  can  see  no  hope  for  him.  He  grows 
more  and  more  the  madman  as  he  broods 
over  his  horrible  situation.  The  whole  thing 
seems  incredible  to  me.  Never  was  a  human 
being  in  such  perpetual  living  purgatory- 
unlimited,  absolute  power  on  the  one  hand,  un- 
fathomable, never-cool-down  hell  on  the  other." 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    169 

"Jim,  how  does  he  do  what  he  does?  I 
cannot  make  out  from  anything  I  have  read 
or  you  have  told  me,  how  he  creates  those 
panics  and  makes  all  that  money." 

"No  one  has  ever  been  able  to  figure  it 
out,"  I  answered.  "I  understand  the  stock 
business,  but  I  cannot  for  the  life  of  me  see 
how  he  does  it.  He  has  none  of  the  money 
powers  in  league  with  him,  that's  sure,  for 
in  the  mood  he  has  been  in  during  the  past 
two  years  it  would  be  impossible  for  him 
to  work  with  them,  even  if  his  salvation 
depended  on  it.  The  mention  of  any  of  the 
big  'System'  men  drives  him  to  a  fury.  He 
has  to-day  made  more  money  than  any  one 
man  ever  made  in  a  day  since  the  world 
began,  and  he  had  only  commenced  his  work 
when  he  quit  to  please  me.  As  I  stand  in 
the  Exchange  and  watch  him  do  it,  it  seems 
commonplace  and  simple.  Afterward  it  is 
beyond  my  comprehension.  At  the  gait  he 
is  going,  the  Rockefeller,  Vanderbilt,  and 
Gould  fortunes  combined  will  look  tiny  in 
comparison  with  the  one  he  will  have  in  a 
few  years.  It  is  beyond  my  power  of  figur- 
ing out,  and  it  gives  me  a  headache  every 
time  I  try  to  see  through  it." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A  NUMBER  of  times  during  the  fol- 
lowing  year,  and  finally  on  the 
anniversary  of  the  Sands  tragedy,  Bob 
carried  the  Exchange  to  the  verge  of 
panic,  only  to  turn  the  market  and  save 
"the  Street"  in  the  end.  His  profits  were 
fabulous.  Already  his  fortune  was  estimated 
to  be  between  two  and  three  hundred  mil- 
lions, one  of  the  largest  in  the  world.  His 
name  had  become  one  of  terror  wherever 
stocks  were  dealt  in.  Wall  Street  had  come 
to  regard  his  every  deal,  from  the  moment 
that  he  began  operations,  as  inevitably  suc- 
cessful. Now  and  again  he  would  jump 
into  the  market  when  some  of  the  plunging 
cliques  had  a  bear  raid  under  way,  and 
would  put  them  to  rout  by  buying  every- 
thing in  sight  and  bidding  up  prices  until 
it  looked  as  though  he  intended  to  do  as 
extraordinary  work  on  the  up-side  as  he  was 
wont  to  do  on  the  down.  At  such  times  he 
was  the  idol  of  the  Exchange,  which  wor- 
ships the  man  who  puts  prices  up  as  it  hates 

170 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    171 

him  who  pulls  them  down.  Once  when 
war  news  flashed  over  the  wires  from  Wash- 
ington and  rumour  had  the  Cabinet  mem- 
bers, Senators,  and  Congressmen  selling  the 
market  short  on  advance  information,  when 
the  "Standard  Oil"  banks  had  put  up 
money  rates  to  150  per  cent,  and  a  crash 
seemed  inevitable,  Bob  suddenly  smashed 
the  loan  market  by  offering  to  lend  one 
hundred  millions  at  four  per  cent.;  and  by 
buying  and  bidding  up  prices  at  the  same 
time,  he  put  the  whole  Washington  crowd 
and  its  New  York  accomplices  to  disastrous 
rout  and  caused  them  to  lose  millions.  He 
continued  his  operations  with  increasing  vio- 
lence and  increasing  profits  up  to  the  fourth 
anniversary  of  the  tragedy.  On  the  inter- 
vening anniversary  I  had  been  compelled 
by  self-interest  and  fear  that  he  would 
really  pull  down  the  entire  Wall  Street  struc- 
ture, to  rush  in  and  fairly  drag  him  off. 
But  with  his  growing  madness  my  influence 
was  waning.  Each  raid  it  was  with  greater 
difficulty  that  I  got  his  ear. 

Finally,  on  the  fourth  anniversary,  in  a 
panic  that  seemed  to  be  running  into  some- 
thing more  terrible  than  any  previous,  he 
savagely  refused  to  accede  to  my  appeal, 


172    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

telling  me  that  he  would  not  stop,  even  if 
Randolph  &  Randolph  were  doomed  to  go 
down  in  the  crash.  It  had  become  known 
on  the  floor  that  I  was  the  only  one  who  could 
do  anything  with  him  in  his  frenzies,  and  my 
pleading  with  him  in  the  lobby  was  watched 
by  the  members  of  the  Exchange  with  triple 
eyed  suspense.  When  it  was  clear  from  his 
emphatic  gestures  and  raised  voice — for  he 
was  in  a  reckless  mood  from  drink  and  mad- 
ness and  took  no  pains  to  disguise  his  in- 
tentions— that  I  could  not  prevail  upon  him, 
there  was  a  frantic  rush  for  the  poles  to  throw 
over  stocks  in  advance  of  him.  Suddenly, 
after  I  had  turned  from  him  in  despair,  there 
flashed  into  my  mind  an  idea.  The  situation 
was  desperate.  I  was  dealing  with  a  mad- 
man, and  I  decided  that  I  was  justified  in 
making  this  last  try.  I  rushed  back  to  him. 
"Bob,  good-bye,"  I  whispered  in  his  ear, 
"good-bye.  In  ten  minutes  you  will  get  word 
that  Jim  Randolph  has  cut  his  throat!"  He 
stopped  as  though  I  had  plunged  a  knife 
into  him,  struck  his  forehead  a  resounding 
blow,  and  into  his  wild  brown  eyes  came 
a  sickening  look  of  fear. 

"Stop,    Jim,     for    God's    sake,    don't    say 
that   to   me.     My   cup   is   full   now.     Don't 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    173 

tell  me  I  am  to  have  that  crime  on  my  soul." 
He  thought  a  moment.  "I  don't  know 
whether  you  mean  it,  Jim,  but  I  can  take  no 
chances,  not  for  all  the  money  in  the  world, 
not  even  for  revenge.  Wait  here,  Jim." 
He  yelled  for  his  brokers,  and  several  rushed 
to  him  from  different  parts  of  the  room.  He 
sent  them  back  into  the  crowd  while  he 
dashed  for  the  Amalgamated-pole.  The  day 
was  saved. 

Presently  he  came  back  to  me.  "Jim, 
I  must  have  a  talk  with  you.  Come  over  to 
my  office."  When  we  got  there  he  turned 
the  key  and  stood  in  front  of  me.  His  great 
eyes  looked  full  into  mine.  In  college  days, 
gazing  into  their  brown  depths,  by  some 
magic  I  seemed  to  see  the  heroes  and  heroines 
of  always  happy-ending  tales,  as  the  child 
sees  enchanted  creatures  far  back  in  the  burn- 
ing Yule  log  flames.  But  there  were  no 
joyous  beings  in  the  haunted  depths  of 
Bob's  eyes  that  day. 

"Jim,  you  gave  me  an  awful  scare,"  he 
said  brokenly.  "Don't  ever  do  it  again. 
I  have  little  left  to  live  for.  To  be  sure  I 
have  some  feeling  for  mother,  Fred,  and 
sisters.  But  for  you  I  have  a  love  second 
only  to  that  I  should  have  felt  for  Beulah 


174    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

had  I  been  allowedkto  have  her.  The  thought, 
Jim,  that  I  had  wrecked  your  life,  with  all 
you  have  to  live  for,  would  have  been  the 
last  straw.  My  life  is  purgatory.  Beulah 
is  only  an  ever-present  curse  to  me — a  ghost 
that  rends  my  heart  and  soul,  one  minute 
with  a  blind  frenzy  to  revenge  her  wrongs, 
the  next  with  an  icy  remorse  that  I  have  not 
already  done  so.  If  I  did  not  have  her, 
perhaps  in  time  I  could  forget;  perhaps 
I  might  lay  out  some  scheme  to  help  poor 
devils  whose  poverty  makes  life  unendurable, 
and  with  the  millions  I  have  taken  from  that 
main  shaft  of  hell  I  might  do  things  that 
would  at  least  bring  quiet  to  my  soul;  but  it 
is  impossible  with  the  living  corpse  of  Beulah 
Sands  before  me  every  minute  and  that 
devil  machinery  whirling  in  my  brain  all 
the  time  the  song,  *  Revenge  her  and  her 
father,  revenge  yourself.'  It  is  impossible 
to  give  it  up,  Jim.  I  must  have  revenge. 
I  must  stop  this  machinery  that  is  smashing 
up  more  American  hearts  and  souls  each 
year  than  all  the  rest  of  earth's  grinders 
combined.  Every  day  I  delay  I  become 
more  fiendish  in  my  desires.  Jim,  don't 
think  I  do  not  know  that  I  have  literally 
turned  into  a  fiend.  Whenever  of  late  I 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    175 

see  myself  in  the  mirror,  I  shudder.  When 
I  think  of  what  I  was  when  your  father  stood 
us  up  in  his  office  and  started  us  in  this  heart- 
shrivelling,  soul-callousing  business,  and  what 
I  am  now,  I  cannot  keep  the  madness  down 
except  with  rum.  You  know  what  it  means 
for  me  to  say  this,  me  who  started  with  all 
the  pride  of  a  Brownley;  but  it  is  so,  Jim. 
The  other  night  I  went  home  with  my  soul 
frozen  with  thoughts  of  the  past  and  with 
my  brain  ablaze  with  rum,  intending  to  end 
it  all.  I  got  out  my  revolver,  and  woke 
Beulah,  but  as  I  said,  'Bob  is  going  to  kill 
Beulah  and  himself,'  she  laughed  that  sweet 
child's  laugh  and  clapping  her  hands  said, 
'Bob  is  so  good  to  play  with  Beulah,'  and 
then  I  thought  of  that  devil  Reinhart  and 
the  other  fiends  of  the  'System'  being  left 
to  continue  their  work  unhindered  and  I 
could  not  do  it.  I  must  have  revenge;  I 
must  smash  that  heart-crushing  machinery. 
Then  I  can  go,  and  take  Beulah  with  me. 
Now,  Jim,  let  us  have  it  clearly  understood 
once  and  for  all." 

Remorse  and  softness  were  past;  he  was 
the  Indian  again.  "I  am  going  to  wreck 
that  hell-annex  some  day,  and  that  some  day 
will  be  the  next  time  I  start  in.  Don't  argue 


176    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

with  me,  don't  misunderstand  me.  To-day 
you  stopped  me.  I  don't  know  whether 
you  meant  what  you  threatened;  I  don't  care 
now.  It  is  just  as  well  that  I  stopped,  for 
the  *  System's'  machine  will  be  there  when- 
ever I  start  in  again.  It  loses  nothing  of  its 
fiendishness,  none  of  its  destructive  powers 
by  grinding,  but,  on  the  contrary,  as  you 
know,  it  increases  its  speed  every  day  it  runs. 
Now,  Jim  Randolph,  I  want  to  tell  you  that 
you  must  get  yours  and  the  house's  affairs 
in  such  shape  that  you  won't  be  hurt  when  I 
go  into  that  human  rat-pit  the  next  time,  for 
when  I  come  from  it  the  New  York  Stock 
Exchange  and  the  'System'  will  have  had  their 
spines  unjointed.  Yes,  and  I'll  have  their 
hearts  out,  too.  Neither  will  ever  again  be 
able  to  take  from  the  American  people  their 
savings  and  their  manhood  and  womanhood 
and  give  them  in  exchange  unadulterated 
torment.  I  am  going  to  be  fair  with  you, 
Jim;  this  is  the  last  time  I  will  discuss  the 
subject.  After  this  you  must  take  your  chance 
with  the  rest  of  those  who  have  to  do  with  the 
cursed  business.  When  I  strike  again,  none 
will  be  spared.  I  will  wreck  'the  Street',  and 
the  innocent  will  go  down  with  the  guilty,  if 
they  have  any  stocks  on  hand  at  that  time. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    177 

"My  power,  Jim,  is  unlimited;  nothing 
can  stay  it.  I  am  not  going  to  explain  any 
further.  You  have  seen  me  work.  You 
must  know  that  my  power  is  greater  than  the 
'System's,'  and  you  and  I  and  'the  Street* 
have  always  known  that  the  'System*  is 
more  powerful  than  the  Government,  more 
powerful  than  are  the  courts,  legislatures, 
Congress,  and  the  President  of  the  United 
States  combined,  that  it  absolutely  controls 
the  foundation  on  which  they  rest — the  money 
of  the  nation.  But  my  power  is  greater,  a 
thousand,  yes,  a  million  times  greater  than 
theirs.  Jim,  they  say  that  I  have  made  more 
money  than  any  man  in  the  world.  They 
say  that  I  have  five  hundred  millions  of 
dollars,  but  the  fools  don't  keep  track  of  my 
movements.  They  only  know  that  I  have 
pulled  five  hundred  millions  from  my  open 
whirls,  the  ones  they  have  had  an  opportunity 
to  keep  tab  on.  But  I  tell  you  that  I  have 
made  even  more  in  my  secret  deals  than  the 
amount  they  have  seen  me  take.  I  have  had 
my  agents  with  my  capital  in  every  deal,  every 
steal  the  'System*  has  rigged  up.  The  world 
has  been  throwing  up  its  hands  in  horror 
because  Carnegie,  the  blacksmith  of  Pittsburg, 
pulled  off  three  hundred  millions  of  swag  in 


178    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

the  Steel  hold-up — yes,  swag,  Jim.  Don't 
scowl  as  though  you  wanted  to  read  me  a 
lecture  on  the  coarseness  of  my  language.  I 
have  learned  to  call  this  game  of  ours  by  its 
right  name.  It  is  not  business  enterprise  with 
earned  profits  as  results,  but  pulled-off  tricks 
witht  bags  of  loot — black-jack  swag — for  their 
end. 

"I  got  away  with  three  hundred  millions 
when  Steel  slumped  from  105  to  50  and  from 
50  to  8,  and  no  one  knew  I'd  made  a  dollar. 
You  and  'the  Street'  read  every  morning  last 
year  the  'guesses'  as  to  who  could  be  round- 
ing up  the  hundreds  of  millions  on  the  slump. 
The  papers  and  the  market  letters  one  morn- 
ing said  it  was  'Standard  Oil';  the  next,  that 
it  was  Morgan;  then  it  was  Frick,  Schwab, 
Gates,  and  so  on  down  through  the  list.  Of 
course,  none  of  them  denied;  it  is  capital  to 
all  these  knights  of  the  road  to  be  making 
millions  in  the  minds  of  the  world,  even  though 
they  never  get  any  of  the  money.  Dick 
Turpin  and  Jonathan  Wild  never  were  fonder 
of  having  the  daring  hold-ups  that  other  high- 
waymen perpetrated  laid  to  their  doors,  than 
are  these  modern  bandits  of  being  credited 
with  ruthless  deeds  that  they  did  not  commit. 
But  Jim,  'twas  I,  'twas  I  who  sold  Pennsyl- 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     179 

vania  every  morning  for  a  year,  while  the 
selling  was  explained  by  the  press  as  'Cassatt 
cutting  down  Gould's  telegraph  poles.  Gould 
and  old  man  Rockefeller  selling  Pennsylvania 
to  get  even/  Jim  Randolph,  I  have  to-day 
a  billion  dollars,  not  the  Rockefeller  or  Car- 
negie kind,  but  a  real  billion.  If  I  had  no 
other  power  but  the  power  to  call  to-morrow 
for  that  billion  in  cash,  it  would  be  sufficient 
to  lay  in  waste  the  financial  world  before  to- 
morrow night.  You  are  welcome,  Jim,  to 
any  part  of  that  billion,  and  the  more  you 
take  the  happier  you  will  make  me,  but  when 
I  strike  in  again,  don't  attempt  to  stay  me, 
for  it  will  do  no  good." 

Shortly  after  this  talk  Bob  left  for  Europe 
with  Beulah.  A  great  German  expert  on 
brain  disorders  had  held  out  hope  that  a  six 
month's  treatment  at  his  sanitarium  in  Berlin 
might  aid  in  restoring  her  mind.  They  re- 
turned the  following  August.  The  trip  had 
been  fruitless.  It  was  plain  to  me  that  Bob 
was  the  same  hopelessly  desperate  man  as 
when  he  left,  more  hopeless,  more  desperate 
if  anything  than  when  he  warned  me  of  his 
determination. 

When  he  left  for  Europe  "the  Street" 
breathed  more  freely,  and  as  time  went  by 


180    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

and  there  was  no  sign  of  his  confidence- 
disturbing  influence  in  the  market,  the  "Sys- 
tem" began  to  bring  out  its  deferred  deals. 
Times  were  ripe  for  setting  up  the  most  wildly 
inflated  stock  lamb-shearing  traps.  It  had 
been  advertised  throughout  the  world  that 
Tom  Reinhart,  now  a  two-hundred-time 
millionaire,  was  to  consolidate  his  and  many 
other  enterprises  into  one  gigantic  trust  with 
twelve  billions  of  capital.  His  Union  and 
Southern  Pacific  Railroads,  his  coal  and 
Southern  lines,  together  with  his  steamship 
company  and  lead,  iron,  and  copper  mines, 
were  to  be  merged  with  the  steel,  traction, 
gas,  and  other  enterprises  he  owned  jointly 
with  "Standard  Oil."  Some  of  the  railroads 
owned  by  Rockefeller  and  his  pals,  in  which 
Reinhart  had  no  part,  were  to  go  in  too,  and 
with  these  was  to  unite  that  mother  hog  of 
them  all,  "Standard  Oil"  itself.  The  trust 
was  to  be  an  enormous  holding  company,  the 
like  of  which  had  until  then  not  even  been 
dreamed  of  by  the  most  daring  stock  manip- 
ulators. The  "System's"  banks,  as  well 
as  trust  and  insurance  companies  through- 
out the  country,  had  for  a  long  time  been 
getting  into  shape  by  concentrating  the  money 
of  the  country  for  this  monster  trust.  It  was 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     181 

newspaper  and  news  bureau  gossip  that  Rein- 
hart  and  his  crowd  had  bought  millions  of 
shares  of  the  different  stocks  involved  in  the 
deal,  and  it  was  common  knowledge  that 
upon  its  successful  completion  Reinhart's 
fortune  would  be  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a 
billion.  On  October  1st  the  certificate  of 
the  Anti-People's  Trust,  $12,000,000,000  cap- 
ital, 120,000,000  shares,  were  listed  upon  the 
New  York,  London,  and  Boston  Stock  Ex- 
changes, and  the  German  and  French  Bourses, 
and  trading  in  them  started  off  fast  and  furious 
at  106.  The  claim  that  one  billion  of  the 
twelve  billions  capital  had  been  set  aside  to 
be  used  in  protecting  and  manipulating  the 
stock  in  the  market,  had  been  so  widely 
advertised  that  even  the  most  daring  plunger 
did  not  think  of  selling  it  short. 

It  was  evident  to  all  in  the  stock-gambling 
world  that  this  was  to  be  the  "System's*' 
grand  coup,  that  at  its  completion  the  masses 
would  be  rudely  awakened  to  a  realisation 
that  their  savings  were  invested  in  the  com- 
bined American  industries  at  vastly  inflated 
values,  that  the  few  had  all  the  real  money, 
and  that  any  attempt  upon  the  people's  part 
to  regulate  and  control  the  new  system  of 
robbery,  would  be  fraught  with  unparalleled 


182    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

disaster — not  to  the  "System,"  but  to  the 
people. 

Since  Bob's  return  from  Europe  I  had  seen 
him  but  a  few  times.  Up  to  October  1st  he 
had  not  been  near  the  Stock  Exchange  or 
"the  Street."  Shortly  after  the  listing  of 
the  "People  Be  Damned,"  as  "the  Street" 
had  dubbed  the  new  trust,  he  began  to  show 
up  at  his  office  regularly.  This  was  the  con- 
dition of  affairs  when  Fred  Brownley  called 
me  up  on  the  telephone,  as  I  related  at  the 
beginning  of  my  story,  which  I  did  not  realise 
I  had  been  so  long  in  telling. 

My  thoughts  had  been  chasing  each  other 
with  lightning-like  rapidity  back  over  the 
last  five  years  and  the  fifteen  before  them, 
and  each  thought  deepened  the  black  mist 
over  my  present  mental  vision.  In  the  midst 
of  my  reflections  my  telephone  rang  again. 

"Mr.  Randolph,  for  Heaven's  sake  have 
you  done  nothing  yet?"  It  was  Fred  Brown- 
ley's  voice.  "  Things  are  frightful  here.  Bob's 
brokers  are  selling  stocks  at  five  and  ten 
thousand-lot  clips.  Barry  Conant  is  lead- 
ing Reinhart's  forces.  It  is  said  he  has  the 
pool's  protection  order  in  Anti-People's  and 
that  it  is  unlimited,  but  Bob  has  the  Reinhart 
crowd  pretty  badly  scared.  Swan  has  just 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     183 

finished  giving  Conant  a  hundred  thousand 
off  the  reel  in  10,000  lots,  and  he  told  me  a 
moment  ago  he  was  going  over  to  get  Bob  him- 
self to  face  Barry  Conant.  They're  down 
twenty  points  on  the  average,  although  they 
haven't  let  Anti-People's  break  an  eighth 
yet.  They  have  it  pegged  at  106,  but  there 
is  an  ugly  rumour  just  in  that  Bob,  under 
cover  of  a  general  attack,  is  unloading  Anti- 
People's  on  to  the  Reinhart  wing  for  Rogers 
and  Rockefeller,  and  the  rumour  is  getting 
in  its  work.  Even  Barry  Conant  is  growing 
a  bit  anxious.  The  latest  talk  is  that  Rein- 
hart  is  borrowing  hundreds  of  millions  on  Anti- 
People's,  and  that  his  loans  are  being  called 
in  all  directions.  Do  you  know  Reinhart 
is  at  his  place  in  Virginia  and  cannot  get 
here  before  to-morrow  night?  If  Bob 
breaks  through  Anti-People's  peg,  it  will  be 
the  worst  crash  yet." 

"All  right,  Fred,"  I  answered.  "I  will 
go  over  to  Bob's  right  now.  I  hate  to  do  it, 
but  there  is  no  other  hope." 

I  dropped  the  receiver  and  started  for 
Bob's  office.  As  I  went  through  his  counting- 
room  one  of  the  clerks  said,  "They  have 
just  broken  Anti-People's  to  90  on  a  bulletin 
that  Tom  Reinhart's  wife  and  only  daughter 


184    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

have  been  killed  in  an  automobile  accident  at 
their  place  in  Virginia.  They  first  had  it 
that  Reinhart  himself  was  killed.  That  has 
been  corrected,  although  the  latest  word  is 
that  he  is  prostrated." 

I  rapped  on  Bob's  private-office  door.  I 
felt  the  coming  struggle  as  I  heard  his  hoarse 
bellow,  "Come  in."  He  stood  at  the  ticker, 
with  the  tape  in  one  hand,  while  with  the  other 
he  held  the  telephone  receiver  to  his  ear. 
My  God,  what  a  picture  for  a  stage!  His 
magnificent  form  was  erect,  his  feet  were  as 
firmly  planted  as  if  he  were  made  of  bronze, 
his  shoulders  thrown  back  as  if  he  were  with- 
standing the  rush  of  the  Stock  Exchange 
hordes,  his  eyes  afire  with  a  sullen,  smoul- 
dering blaze,  his  jaw  was  set  in  a  way  that 
brought  into  terrible  relief  the  new,  hard 
lines  of  desperation  that  had  recently  come 
into  his  face.  His  great  chest  was  rising 
and  falling  as  though  he  were  engaged  in  a 
physical  struggle;  his  perfect-fitting,  heavy 
black  Melton  cutaway  coat,  thrown  back  from 
the  chest,  and  a  low,  turned-down,  white 
collar  formed  the  setting  for  a  throat  and 
head  that  reminded  one  of  a  forest  monarch 
at  bay  on  the  mountain  crag  awaiting  the 
coming  of  the  hounds  and  hunters. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    185 

I  hesitated  at  the  threshold  to  catch  my 
breath,  as  I  took  in  the  terrific  figure.  Had 
Bob  Brownley  been  an  enemy  of  mine  I 
should  have  backed  out  in  fear,  and  I  do  not 
confess  to  more  than  my  fair  share  of  cow- 
ardice. Inwardly  I  thanked  God  that  Bob 
was  in  his  office  instead  of  on  the  floor  of  the 
Exchange.  His  whole  appearance  was  fright- 
ful. He  showed  in  every  line  and  lineament 
that  he  was  a  man  who  would  hesitate  at  noth- 
ing, even  at  killing,  if  he  should  find  a  human 
obstacle  in  his  road  and  his  mind  should  sug- 
gest murder.  He  was  the  personification 
of  the  most  awful  madness.  Even  when  he 
caught  sight  of  me,  he  hardly  moved,  although 
my  coming  must  have  been  a  surprise. 

"So  it  is  you,  Jim  Randolph,  is  it?  What 
brings  you  here?"  His  voice  was  hoarse, 
but  it  had  a  metallic  ring  that  went  to  my 
marrow.  Bob  Brownley  in  all  the  years  of 
our  friendship  had  never  spoken  to  me  ex- 
cept in  kind  and  loving  regard.  I  looked  at 
him,  stunned.  I  must  have  shown  how  hurt 
I  was.  But  if  he  saw  it,  he  gave  no  sign. 
His  eyes,  looking  straight  into  mine,  changed 
no  more  than  if  he  had  been  addressing  his 
deadliest  enemy. 

Again  his  voice  rang  out,  "What  brings  you 


186    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

here  ?  Do  you  come  to  plead  again  for  that  das- 
tard Reinhart  after  the  warning  I  gave  you  ?" 

I  clenched  both  hands  until  I  felt  the  nails 
cut  the  flesh  of  my  palms.  I  loved  Bob 
Brownley.  I  would  have  done  anything  to 
make  him  happy,  would  willingly  have  sac- 
rificed my  own  life  to  protect  his  from  him- 
self or  others,  but  this  madman,  this  wild 
brute,  was  no  more  Bob  Brownley  as  I  had 
known  him  than  the  howling  northeast  gale 
of  December  is  the  gentle,  welcome  zephyr 
of  August;  and  I  felt  a  resentment  at  his 
brutal  speech  that  I  could  hardly  suppress. 
With  a  mighty  effort  I  crushed  it  back,  trying  to 
think  of  nothing  but  his  awful  misery  and  the 
Bob  of  our  college  days. 

I  said  in  a  firm  voice,  "Bob,  is  this  the  way 
to  talk  to  me  in  your  own  office  ?"  At  any 
time  before,  my  words  and  tone  would  have 
touched  his  all-generous  Southern  chivalry, 
but  now  he  said  harshly — "To  hell  with  sen- 
timent. What "  He  did  not  take  his  eyes 

from  mine,  but  they  told  me  that  he  was 
listening  to  a  voice  in  the  receiver.  Only 
for  a  second;  then  he  let  loose  a  wild  laugh, 
which  must  have  penetrated  to  the  outer  office. 

"Eighty  and  coming  like  a  spring  freshet," 
he  said  into  the  mouthpiece,  "and  the  boys 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    187 

want  to  know  if  I  won't  let  up  now  that  Rein- 
hart  is  down?  Go  back  and  smother  them 
with  all  they  will  take  down  to  60.  That's 
my  answer.  Tell  them  if  Reinhart  had  ten 
more  wives  and  daughters  and  they  were  all 
killed,  I'd  rend  his  bastard  trust  to  help  him 
dull  his  sorrow.  Give  the  word  at  every 
pole  that  I  will  have  Reinhart  where  he  will 
curse  his  luck  that  he  was  not  in  the  auto- 
mobile with  the  rest  of  his  tribe 

"To  hell  with  sentiment!"  He  was  speak- 
ing to  me  again.  "What  do  you  want? 
If  you  are  here  to  beg  for  Reinhart  and  his 
pack  of  yellow  curs,  you've  got  your  answer. 
I  wouldn't  let  up  on  that  fiendish  hyena, 
not  if  his  wife  and  daughter  and  all  the  dead 
wives  and  daughters  of  every  'System'  man 
came  back  in  their  grave  clothes  and  begged. 
I  wouldn't  let  up  a  share."  I  gasped  in 
horror. 

"When  did  those  robbers  of  men  and 
despoilers  of  women  and  children  ever  let  up 
because  of  death  ?  When  were  they  ever 
known  to  wait  even  till  the  corpse  stiffened 
to  pluck  out  the  hearts  of  the  victims?  It 
is  my  turn  now,  and  if  I  let  up  a  hair  may  I, 
yes,  and  Beulah,  too,  be  damned,  eternally 
damned." 


188    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

I  could  not  stand  it.  If  I  stayed,  I,  too, 
should  become  mad.  I  reached  for  the  door- 
knob, but  before  I  could  swing  the  door  open 
Bob  was  upon  me  like  a  wolf.  He  grasped 
me  by  the  shoulders  and  with  the  strength  of 
a  madman  hurled  me  half  across  the  room. 
I  sank  into  a  chair. 

"No,  you  don't,  Jim  Randolph,  no,  you 
don't.  You  came  here  for  something  and, 
by  heaven,  you  will  tell  me  what  it  is!  You 
know  me;  you  are  the  only  human  being  who 
does.  You  know  what  I  was,  you  see  what 
I  am.  You  know  what  they  did  to  me  to 
make  me  what  I  am.  You  know,  Jim  Ran- 
dolph, you  know  whether  I  deserved  it.  You 
know  whether  in  all  my  life  up  to  the  day 
those  dollar-frenzied  hounds  tore  my  soul, 
I  had  done  any  man,  woman,  or  child  a  wrong. 
You  know  whether  I  had,  and  now  you  are 
going  to  sneak  off  and  leave  me  as  though  I 
were  a  cur  dog  of  the  Reinhart-' Standard 
Oil'  breed  gone  mad!" 

He  was  standing  over  me,  a  terrible  yet  a 
magnificent  figure.  As  he  hurled  these  words 
at  me,  I  was  sure  he  had  really  lost  his  mind; 
that  I  was  in  the  presence  of  a  man  truly 
mad.  But  only  for  an  instant;  then  my 
horror,  my  anger  turned  to  a  great,  crushing, 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    189 

all-consuming  agony  of  pity  for  Bob,  and  I 
dropped  my  head  on  my  hands  and  wept. 
It  is  hard  to  admit  it,  but  it  is  true — I  wept 
uncontrollably.  In  an  instant  the  room  was 
quiet  except  for  the  sound  of  my  own  awful 
grief.  I  heard  it,  was  ashamed  of  it,  but  I 
could  not  stop.  The  telephone  rang  again 
and  again,  wildly,  shrilly,  but  there  was  no 
answer.  The  stillness  became  so  oppressive 
that  even  my  own  sobs  quieted.  I  gasped 
as  the  lump  in  my  throat  choked  me,  then  I 
slowly  raised  my  eyes. 

Bob's  towering  figure  was  in  front  of  me. 
His  head  had  fallen  forward,  and  his  arms 
were  folded  across  his  breast.  But  that  he 
stood  erect  I  should  have  thought  him  dead, 
so  still  was  he.  I  jumped  to  my  feet  and 
looked  into  his  face,  down  which  great  tears 
were  dropping  silently.  I  touched  him  on  the 
shoulder. 

"Bob,  my  dear  old  chum,  Bob,  forgive 
me.  For  God's  sake,  forgive  me  for  intrud- 
ing on  your  misery." 

I  looked  at  him.  I  will  never  forget  his 
face.  No  heartbroken  woman's  could  have 
been  sadder.  He  slowly  raised  his  head, 
then  staggered  and  grasped  the  ticker-stand 
for  support. 


190    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

"Don't,  Jim,  don't — don't  ask  me  to  for- 
give you.  Oh,  Jim,  Jim,  my  old  friend, 
forgive  me  for  my  madness;  forget  what 
I  said  to  you,  forget  the  brute  you  just  saw 
and  think  of  me  as  of  old,  when  I  would  have 
plucked  out  my  tongue  if  I  had  caught  it 
saying  a  harsh  word  to  the  best  and  truest 
friend  man  ever  had.  Jim,  forget  it  all. 
I  was  mad,  I  am  mad,  I  have  been  mad 
for  a  long  time,  but  it  cannot  last  much 
longer.  I  know  it  can't,  and,  Jim,  by  all 
our  past  love,  by  the  memories  of  the  dear 
old  days  at  St.  Paul's  and  at  Harvard,  the 
dear  old  days  of  hope  and  happiness,  when 
we  planned  for  the  future,  try  to  think  of 
me  only  as  you  knew  me  then,  as  you  know 
that  I  should  now  be,  but  for  the  *  System's* 


curse." 


The  clerks  were  pounding  on  the  door; 
through  the  glass  showed  many  forms.  They 
had  been  gathering  for  minutes  while  Bob 
talked  in  his  low,  sad  tone,  a  tone  that  no 
one  could  believe  came  from  the  same  mouth 
that  a  few  moments  before  had  poured  forth 
a  flood  of  brutal  heartlessness. 

Bob  went  to  the  door.  The  office  was  in 
an  uproar.  Twenty  or  thirty  of  Bob's  bro- 
kers were  there,  aghast  at  not  getting  a  reply 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    191 

to  their  calls.  Many  more  were  pouring  in 
through  the  outer  office.  Bob  looked  at 
them  coldly.  "Well,  what  is  the  trouble? 
Is  it  possible  we  are  down  to  a  point  where 
the  Stock  Exchange  rushes  over  to  a  man's 
office  when  his  wire  happens  to  break  down?" 

They  saw  his  bluff.  You  cannot  deceive 
Stock  Exchange  men,  at  least  not  the  kind 
that  Bob  Brownley  employed  on  panic  days, 
but  his  coolness  reassured  them,  and  when 
they  saw  me  it  was  odds-on  that  they  guessed 
to  a  man  why  Bob  had  ignored  his  wires — 
guessed  that  I  had  been  pleading  for  the  life 
of  "the  Street." 

"Well,  where  do  you  stand?" 

Frank  Swan  answered  for  the  crowd: 
"The  panic  is  in  full  swing.  She's  a  cellar- 
to-ridge-pole  ripper.  They're  down  40  or 
over  on  an  average.  Anti-People's  is  down 
to  35,  and  still  coming  like  sawdust  over  a 
broken  dam.  Barry  Conant's  house  and 
a  dozen  other  of  Reinhart's  have  gone  under. 
His  banks  and  trust  companies  are  going 
every,  minute.  The  whole  Street  will  be 
overboard  before  the  close.  The  governing 
committee  has  just  called  a  meeting  to  see 
whether  it  will  not  be  best  to  adjourn  the 
Exchange  over  to-day  and  to-morrow." 


192    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Bob  listened  as  if  he  had  been  a  master 
at  the  wheel  in  a  gale,  receiving  reports  from 
his  mates. 

There  was  no  trace  now  of  the  scene  he 
had  just  been  through.  He  was  cool,  master- 
ful, like  the  seasoned  sea-dog  who  knows 
that  in  spite  of  the  ocean's  rage  and  the  wind's 
howl,  the  wheel  will  answer  his  hand  and 
the  craft  its  rudder.  "  Jim,  come  over  to  the 
Exchange."  The  crowd  followed  along. 
"We  have  but  a  minute  and  I  want  to  have 
you  say  you  forgive  me,"  he  said  to  me. 
"I  know,  Jim,  you  understand  it  all,  but 
I  must  tell  you  how  sorrowful  I  am  that  in 
my  madness  I  should  have  so  forgotten  my 
admiration,  respect,  and  love  for  you,  yes, 
and  my  gratitude  to  you,  as  to  say  what  I 
did.  I'll  do  the  only  thing  I  can  to  atone. 
I  will  stop  this  panic  and  undo  as  much  as 
possible  of  my  work;  and  now  that  I  have 
wrecked  Reinhart  I  am  through  with  this 
game  forever,  yes,  through  forever." 

He  pressed  my  hand  in  his  strong,  honest 
one  and  strode  into  the  Exchange  ahead  of 
the  crowd.  All  was  chaos,  although  the 
trading  had  toned  down  to  a  sullen  despera- 
tion. So  many  houses,  banks,  and  trust 
companies  had  failed  that  no  man  knew 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    193 

whether  the  member  he  had  traded  with 
early  in  the  day  would  on  the  morrow  be 
solvent  enough  to  carry  out  his  trades.  The 
man  who  had  been  "long"  in  the  morning, 
and  had  sold  out  before  the  crash,  and  who 
thought  he  now  had  no  interest  in  the  panic, 
found  himself  with  his  stock  again  on  hand, 
because  of  the  failure  of  the  one  to  whom 
he  had  sold,  and  the  price  cut  in  two.  The 
man  who  was  "short"  and  who  a  few  minutes 
before  had  been  eagerly  counting  his  profits 
now  knew  that  they  had  been  turned  to  loss, 
because  the  man  from  whom  he  had  bor- 
rowed his  short  stocks  for  delivery  would 
be  in  no  condition  to  repay  for  them,  the  next 
day,  when  they  should  be  returned  to  him. 
The  "short"  man  was  himself,  therefore, 
"long"  stocks  he  had  bought  to  cover  his 
"short"  sale.  In  depressing  the  price  he 
had  been  working  against  his  own  pocket 
instead  of  against  the  bulls  he  had  thought 
he  was  opposing.  All  was  confusion  and 
black  despair.  There  is,  indeed,  no  blacker 
place  than  the  floor  of  the  Stock  Exchange 
after  a  panic  cyclone  has  swept  it,  and  is 
yet  lingering  in  its  corners,  while  the  sur- 
vivors of  its  fury  do  not  know  whether  or 
not  it  will  again  gather  force. 


CHAPTER  IX 

HpHE    Governing   Committee   was    holding 
a    meeting    in    its    room.     Bob  rushed 
in  unceremoniously. 

"One  word,  gentlemen,"  he  called.  "I 
have  more  trades  outstanding,  both  buys 
and  sells,  than  any  other  member  or  house. 
Before  deciding  whether  to  adjourn  in  an 
attempt  to  save  'the  Street',  I  ask  your  con- 
sideration of  this  proposition :  If  the  Exchange 
will  suspend  operations  for  thirty  minutes,  and 
allow  me  to  address  the  members  on  the 
floor,  I  will  agree  to  buy  stocks  all  around 
the  room,  until  they  have  regained  at  least 
half  their  drop — all  of  it,  if  possible.  I  will 
buy  until  I  have  exhausted  to  the  last  hun- 
dred my  fortune  of  a  billion  dollars.  This 
should  make  an  adjournment  unnecessary. 
I  know  that  this  is  a  most  extraordinary 
request,  but  you  are  confronted  with  a  most 
extraordinary  situation,  the  most  remark- 
able in  the  history  of  the  Stock  Exchange. 
Already,  if  what  they  say  on  the  floor  is  correct, 
over  two  hundred  banks  and  trust  companies 

194 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     195 

throughout  the  country  have  gone  under, 
and  new  failures  are  being  announced  every 
minute.  Half  the  members  of  this  and  the 
Boston  and  Philadelphia  Exchanges  are  in- 
solvent and  have  closed  their  doors,  or  will 
close  them  before  three  o'clock,  and  the 
shrinkage  in  values  so  far  reported  runs  over 
fifteen  billions.  Unless  something  is  done 
before  the  close,  there  will  be  a  similar  panic 
in  every  Exchange  and  Bourse  in  Europe 
to-morrow." 

The  committee  instantly  voted  to  lay  the 
proposition  before  the  full  board.  In  another 
minute  the  president's  gavel  sounded,  and 
the  floor  was  still  as  a  tomb.  All  eyes  were 
fixed  on  the  president.  Every  man  in  that 
great  throng  knew  that  upon  the  announce- 
ment they  were  about  to  hear,  might  depend, 
at  least  temporarily,  the  welfare,  not  only 
of  Wall  Street,  but  of  the  nation,  perhaps 
even  of  the  civilised  world.  The  president 
spoke : 

"Members  of  the  New  York  Stock  Ex- 
change : 

"The  Governing  Committee  instructs  me 
to  say  that  Mr.  Robert  Brownley  has  asked 
that  operations  be  suspended  for  thirty  min- 
utes, in  order  that  he  be  allowed  to  address 


196    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

you.  Mr.  Brownley  has  agreed,  if  this  re- 
quest be  granted,  he  will  upon  resumption 
of  operations  purchase  a  sufficient  amount 
of  stock  to  raise  the  average  price  of  all 
active  shares  at  least  one-half  their  total 
drop — all  of  it,  if  possible.  He  agrees  to 
buy  to  the  limit  of  his  fortune  of  a  billion 
dollars.  I  now  put  Mr.  Brownley's  request 
to  a  vote.  All  those  in  favour  of  granting 
it  will  signify  the  same  by  saying  'Yes/  ! 

A  mighty  roof -lifting  "Yes"  sounded 
through  the  room. 

"All  those  opposed,  'No/  " 

There  was  a  deathly  hush. 

"Mr.  Brownley  will  please  speak  from 
this  platform,  and  remember,  in  thirty  min- 
utes to  the  second,  I  will  sound  the  gavel 
for  the  resumption  of  business." 

Bob  Brownley  strode  to  the  place  just 
vacated  by  the  president.  The  crowd  was 
growing  larger  every  minute.  The  ticker 
was  already  hissing  a  tape  biograph  of  this 
extraordinary  situation  in  brokerage  shops, 
hotels,  and  banks  throughout  the  country, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  the  news  of  it  would 
be  in  the  capitals  of  Europe.  Never  before 
in  history  did  man  have  such  an  audience 
— the  whole  civilised  world.  Already  arose 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    197 

from  Wall,  Broad,  and  New  Streets,  which 
surround  the  Exchange,  the  hoarse  bellow 
of  the  gathering  hordes.  Before  the  ticker 
should  announce  the  resumption  of  business 
these  would  number  hundreds  of  thousands, 
for  the  financial  district  for  more  than  an 
hour  had  been  a  surging  mob. 

For  once  at  least  the  much-abused  phrase, 
"He  looked  the  part,"  could  be  used  in  all 
truthfulness.  As  Robert  Brownley  threw 
back  his  head  and  shoulders  and  faced  that 
crowd  of  men,  some  of  whom  he  had  hurt, 
many  of  whom  he  had  beggared,  and  all  of 
whom  he  had  tortured,  he  presented  a  pic- 
ture such  as  a  royal  lion  recently  from  the 
jungles  and  just  freed  from  his  cage  might 
have  made.  Defiance,  deference,  contempt, 
and  pity  all  blended  in  his  mien,  but  over 
all  was  an  I-am-the-one-you-are-the-many 
atmosphere  of  confidence  that  turned  my 
spinal  column  into  a  mercury  tube.  He 
began  to  speak: 

"Men  of  Wall  Street: 

'You  have  just  witnessed  a  record- 
breaking  slaughter.  I  have  asked  permission 
to  talk  to  you  for  the  purpose  of  showing  you 
how  any  member  of  a  great  Stock  Exchange 
may  at  any  time  do  what  I  have  done  to-day. 


Weigh  well  what  I  am  about  to  say  to  you. 
During  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  there 
has  grown  up  in  this  free  and  fair  land  of 
ours  a  system  by  which  the  few  take  from 
the  many  the  results  of  their  labours.  The 
men  who  take  have  no  more  license,  from 
God  or  man,  to  take,  than  have  those  from 
whom  they  filch.  They  are  not  endowed  by 
God  with  superior  wisdom,  nor  have  they 
performed  for  their  fellow-men  any  labour 
or  given  to  them  anything  of  value  that 
entitles  them  to  what  they  take.  Their 
only  license  to  plunder  is  their  knowledge 
of  the  system  of  trickery  and  fraud  that  they 
themselves  have  created.  No  man  can  gain- 
say this,  for  on  every  side  is  the  evidence. 
Men  come  into  Wall  Street  at  sunrise  without 
dollars;  before  that  same  sun  sets  they  de- 
part with  millions.  So  all-powerful  has 
grown  the  system  of  oppression  that  single 
men  take  in  a  single  lifetime  all  the  savings 
of  a  million  of  their  fellows.  To-day  the 
people,  eighty  millions  strong,  are  slaving 
for  the  few,  and  their  pay  is  their  board  and 
keep.  I  saw  this  robbery.  I  felt  the  rob- 
bers' scourge.  I  sought  the  secret.  I  found 
it  here,  here  in  this  gambling-hell.  I  found 
that  the  stocks  we  bought  and  sold  were 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    199 

mere  gambling  chips;  that  the  man  who 
had  the  biggest  stack  could  beat  his 
opponent  off  the  board;  that  his  opponent 
was  the  world,  because  all  men  directly 
or  indirectly  played  the  stock-gambling 
game.  To  win,  it  was  but  necessary  to 
have  unlimited  chips.  If  chips  were  bought 
and  sold,  on  equal  terms,  by  all,  no  one  could 
buy  more  than  he  could  pay  for,  and  the  game, 
although  still  a  gambling  one,  would  be  fair. 
A  few  master  tricksters,  dollar  magicians, 
long  ago  seeing  this  condition,  invented 
the  system  by  which  the  people  are  ruth- 
lessly plundered.  The  system  they  invented 
was  simple,  so  simple  that  for  a  quarter  of 
a  century  it  has  remained  undiscovered  by 
the  world  at  large — and  even  by  you,  who 
profess  to  be  experts.  No  man  thought 
that  a  free  people  who  had  intended  to  allow 
all  the  equal  use  of  every  avenue  for  the 
attainment  of  wealth,  and  who  intended  to 
provide  for  the  safeguarding  of  wealth  after 
it  was  secured,  could  be  such  dolts  as  to  allow 
themselves  to  be  robbed  of  all  their  accu- 
mulated wealth  by  a  device  as  simple  as 
that  by  which  children  play  at  blindman's- 
buff.  The  process  was  no  more  complex 
than  that  employed  by  the  robber  of  old, 


200    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

who  took  the  pebbles  from  the  beach,  marked 
them  money,  and  with  the  money  bought 
the  labour  of  his  fellows,  and  by  the  manipu- 
lation of  that  labour  and  by  turning  pebbles 
into  money  he  took  away  from  the  labourer  the 
money  which  he  had  paid  them  for  the  labour 
until  all  in  the  land  were  slaves  of  the  money- 
maker. These  few  tricksters  said:  We  will 
arbitrarily  manufacture  these  chips — stocks. 
After  we  have  manufactured  them,  we  will  sell 
the  world  what  the  world  can  pay  for,  and  then 
by  the  use  of  the  unlimited  supply  we  still  have 
we  will  win  away  from  the  world  what  it  has 
bought,  and  repeat  the  operation,  until  we 
have  all  the  wealth,  and  the  people  are  en- 
slaved. To  do  this  there  was  one  thing 
besides  the  manufacturing  of  the  chips — 
stocks — that  was  absolutely  necessary — a 
gambling-hell,  the  working  of  whose  machinery 
would  place  a  selling  value  upon  such  chips; 
a  hell  where,  after  selling  the  chips,  they 
could  be  won  back.  I  saw  that  if  these 
tricksters  were  to  be  routed  and  their  *  Sys- 
tem* was  to  be  destroyed,  it  must  be  through 
the  machinery  of  this  Stock  Exchange. 
I  studied  the  machinery,  and  presently  I 
marvelled  that  men  could  for  so  long  have 
been  asses. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    201 

"From  the  very  nature  of  stock-gambling 
it  is  necessary,  absolutely  necessary,  that  it 
be  conducted  under  certain  rules,  unchange- 
able, unbreakable  rules,  to  attempt  to  change 
or  break  which  would  destroy  stock-gambling. 
The  foundation  rule,  the  rule  absolutely 
necessary  for  the  existence  of  stock-gambling 
is:  Any  member  of  the  Stock  Exchange  can 
buy,  or  sell,  between  the  opening  and  the 
closing  of  the  Exchange  as  many  shares  of 
stock  as  he  cares  to.  With  this  rule  in  force 
his  buying  and  selling  cannot  be  restricted  to 
the  amount  he  can  take  and  pay  for,  or  deliver 
and  receive  pay  for,  because  there  is  not 
money  enough  in  the  world  to  pay  for  what 
under  this  same  rule  can  be  bought  and  sold 
in  a  single  session.  This  is  because  there 
have  been  arbitrarily  created  by  these  few 
tricksters  many  times  more  stocks  than  there 
is  money  in  existence.  The  amount  of  stock 
that  any  man  can  sell  in  one  session  of  the 
Exchange  is  limited  only  by  the  amount  that 
he  can  offer  for  sale,  and  he  can  offer  any 
amount  his  tongue  can  utter;  and  he  is  not 
compelled  and  cannot  be  compelled  to  show 
his  ability  to  deliver  what  he  has  offered  for 
sale  until  after  he  has  finished  selling,  which  is 
the  following  day.  You  will  ask  as  I  did :  Can 


202    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

this  be  possible?  You  will  find  the  answer 
I  found.  It  is  so,  and  must  continue  to  be 
so,  or  there  will  be  no  stock-gambling.  Mark 
me,  for  this  statement  is  weighted  with  the 
greatest  import  to  you  all.  A  member  of 
this  Exchange  can  sell  as  many  shares  of 
stock  at  one  session  as  he  cares  to  offer.  If 
any  attempt  is  made  at  the  session  he  sells  at 
to  compel  him  either  before  or  after  he  offers 
to  sell  to  show  his  ability  to  deliver,  away 
goes  the  stock-gambling  structure,  because 
from  the  very  nature  of  the  whole  structure 
of  stock-gambling  the  same  shares  are  sold 
and  resold  many  times  in  each  session  and 
the  seller  cannot  know,  much  less  show, 
that  he  can  deliver  until  he  first  adjusts  with 
the  buyer  and  the  buyer  cannot  adjust  until 
after  he  has  become  such  by  buying.  If  a  rule 
were  made  compelling  a  seller  to  show  his  re- 
sponsibility before  selling,  every  member  would 
have  every  other  member  at  his  mercy  and 
there  could  be  no  stock-gambling.  When  I  had 
worked  this  out,  I  saw  that  while  the  few  trick- 
sters of  the  'System*  had  a  perfect  device  for 
taking  from  the  people  their  wealth,  I  had 
discovered  as  perfect  a  means  of  taking 
away  from  the  few  the  wealth  they  had 
secured  from  the  many.  With  this  know- 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    203 

ledge  came  a  conviction  that  my  way  was  as 
honest  as  the  'System's,'  in  fact  more  honest 
than  theirs.  They  took  from  the  innocent, 
I  took  from  the  guilty  what  had  already 
been  dishonestly  secured.  I  determined  to 
put  my  discovery  into  practice. 

"I  might  never  have  done  so  but  for  that 
Sugar  panic  in  which  I  was  robbed  of  millions 
by  the  'System'  through  Barry  Conant.  In 
that  panic  the  'System,'  with  its  unlimited 
resources,  filched  from  the  people  by  the 
arbitrary  manufacture  of  stocks,  and  by 
their  manipulation  did  to  me  what  I  after- 
ward discovered  I  could  do  to  them,  without 
any  resources  other  than  my  right  to  do 
business  on  the  floor  of  this  Exchange.  You 
saw  the  outcome,  in  the  second  Sugar  panic, 
of  my  first  experiment.  In  a  few  minutes 
I  cleared  a  profit  of  ten  million  dollars.  I 
could  have  made  it  fifty  millions,  or  one 
hundred  and  fifty,  but  I  was  not  then  on 
familiar  terms  with  my  new  robber-robbing 
device,  and  I  had  yet  a  heart.  To  make 
this  ten  millions  of  money,  all  that  was  neces- 
sary for  me  to  do  was  to  sell  more  Sugar  than 
Barry  Conant  could  buy.  This  was  easy, 
because  Barry  Conant,  not  knowing  of  my 
newly  invented  trick,  could  buy  only  what 


204    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

he  could  pay  for  on  the  morrow,  or,  at  least, 
what  he  believed  his  clients  could  pay  for; 
while  I,  not  intending  to  deliver  what  I  sold — 
unless  by  smashing  the  price  to  a  point  where 
I  could  compel  those  who  had  bought  to 
resell  to  me  at  millions  less  than  I  sold  at— 
could  sell  unlimited  amounts — literally  un- 
limited amounts.  When  Barry  Conant  had 
bought  all  that  he  thought  he  could  pay  for, 
he  was  obliged  to  beat  a  retreat  in  front  of 
my  offerings,  and  I  was  able  to  smash,  and 
smash,  until  the  price  was  so  low  that  he  could 
not  by  the  use  of  what  he  had  bought,  as 
collateral,  borrow  sufficient  to  pay  me  for 
what  I  had  sold  him.  Then  he  was  com- 
pelled to  turn  about  and  sell  what  he  had 
bought  from  me,  and  when  I  had  rebought 
it,  for  ten  millions  less  than  I  had  sold  it 
for,  the  trick  had  been  turned.  I  had  sold 
him  100,000  shares  say  at  220.  He  had  sold 
them  back  to  me  say  at  120,  and  he  stood  where 
he  had  stood  at  the  beginning.  He  had 
none  of  the  100,000  shares.  Both  of  us 
stood,  so  far  as  stock  was  concerned,  where 
we  had  stood  at  the  beginnng,  but  as  to  profits 
and  losses  there  was  this  difference:  I  had 
ten  millions  of  dollars  profits,  while  Barry 
Conant's  clients,  the  'System,'  were  ten  mil- 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    205 

lions  losers — and  all  by  a  trick.  The  trick 
did  not  differ  in  principle  from  the  one  in 
constant  practice  by  the  'System.'  When 
the  'System,'  after  manufacturing  Sugar  stock, 
sell  100,000  shares  to  the  people  for 
$10,000,000,  they  so  manipulate  the  market 
by  the  use  of  the  $10,000,000  that  they  have 
taken  from  the  people  as  to  scare  them  into 
selling  the  100,000  shares  back  to  them  for 
$5,000,000.  After  they  have  bought  they 
again  manipulate  the  market  until  the  people 
buy  back  for  $10,000,000  what  they  sold 
for  $5,000,000.  The  'System'  commits  no 
legal  crime.  I  committed  no  legal  crime. 
I  had  not  even  infringed  any  rule  of  the 
Exchange,  any  more  than  had  the  'System' 
when  they  performed  their  trick.  Since  my 
experimental  panic  I  have  repeatedly  put 
the  trick  in  operation,  and  each  time  I  have 
taken  millions,  until  to-day  I  have  in  my 
control,  as  absolutely  as  though  I  had 
honestly  earned  them,  as  the  labourer  earns 
his  week's  wages,  or  the  farmer  the  price 
of  his  crops,  over  $1,000,000,000,  or  sufficient 
to  keep  enslaved  the  rest  of  their  lives  a 
million  people. 

"What   do  you   intelligent   men   think   of 
this  situation  ?     You  know,  because  you  know 


206    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

the  stock-gambling  game,  that  the  American 
people,  with  their  boasted  brains  and  courage, 
come  year  after  year  with  their  bags  of  gold, 
the  result  of  their  prosperous  labours,  and 
dump  them,  hundreds  of  millions,  into  this 
gambling-inferno  of  yours.  You  know  that 
they  are  fools,  these  silly  millions  of  people 
whom  you  term  lambs  and  suckers.  You 
chuckle  as,  year  after  year,  having  been  sent 
away  shorn,  they  return  for  new  shearing. 
You  marvel  that  the  merchants,  manufac- 
turers, miners,  lawyers,  farmers,  who  have 
sufficient  intelligence  to  gather  such  surplus 
legitimately,  would  bring  it  to  our  gambling- 
hell,  where  upon  all  sides  is  plain  proof  that 
we  who  conduct  the  gambling,  and  who 
produce  nothing,  are  obliged  to  take  from 
those  who  do  produce,  hundreds  of  millions 
each  year  for  expenses,  and  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions each  year  for  profits — for  you  know 
that  we  have  nothing  to  give  them  in  return 
for  what  they  bring  to  us.  You  know  that 
every  dollar  of  the  billions  lost  in  Wall  Street 
means  higher  prices  for  steel  rails,  for  lum- 
ber and  cars,  and  that  this  means  higher 
passenger  and  freight  rates  to  the  people. 
You  know  that  when  the  manufacturer  brings 
his  wealth  to  Wall  Street  and  is  robbed  of 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     207 

it,  he  will  add  something  to  the  price  of  boots 
and  shoes,  cotton  and  woollen  clothes,  and 
other  necessities  that  he  makes  and  that  he 
sells  to  the  people.  You  know  that  when 
the  copper,  lead,  tin,  and  iron  miners  part 
with  their  surplus  to  the  'System/  it  means 
higher  prices  to  the  people  for  their  copper 
pots  and  gutters,  for  the  water  that  comes 
through  lead  pipes,  for  their  tin  dippers  and 
wash  boilers,  and  for  their  rents,  and  all 
those  necessities  into  which  machinery,  lum- 
ber, and  other  raw  and  finished  material 
enters.  You  know  that  every  hundred  mil- 
lions dropped  by  real  producers  to  the  brigands 
of  our  world  means  lower  wages  or  less  of 
the  necessities  and  luxuries  for  all  the  people, 
and  especially  for  the  farmer.  You  know 
that  it  is  habit  with  us  of  Wall  Street  to  gloat 
over  the  doctrine  of  the  'System/  which  the 
people  parrot  among  themselves,  the  doctrine 
that  the  people  at  large  are  not  affected  by 
our  gambling,  because  they,  the  people,  hav- 
ing no  surplus  to  gamble  with,  never  come 
into  Wall  Street.  And  yet,  knowing  all 
this,  you  never  thought,  with  all  your  wisdom 
and  cynicism,  that  right  here  in  this  institu- 
tion, which  you  own  and  control,  was  the  open 
sesame,  for  each  or  all  of  you,  to  those  great 


208     FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

chests  of  gold  that  your  clients,  the  *  System,' 
have  filled  to  bursting  from  the  stores  of  the 
people.  What,  I  ask,  do  you  wise  men 
think  of  the  situation  as  you  now  see  it  ?" 

There  was  an  oppressive  stillness  on  the 
floor.  The  great  crowd,  which  now  con- 
tained nearly  all  the  members  of  the  Ex- 
change, listened  with  bulging  eyes  and  open 
mouths  to  the  revelations  of  their  fellow 
member.  From  time  to  time,  as  Bob  Brown- 
ley  poured  forth  his  shot  and  shell  of  deadly 
logic,  from  the  vast  mob  that  now  surrounded 
the  Exchange  rose  a  hoarse  bellow  of  impa- 
tience, for  few  in  that  dense  throng  outside 
could  understand  the  silence  of  the  gigantic 
human  crusher,  which  between  the  hours 
of  ten  and  three  was  never  before  known  to 
miss  a  revolution  except  while  its  victims* 
hearts  and  souls  were  being  removed  from 
its  gears  and  meshes. 

Bob  Brownley  paused  and  looked  down 
into  the  faces  of  the  breathless  gamblers 
with  a  contempt  that  was  superb.  He  went 
on: 

"Men  of  Wall  Street,  it  is  writ  in  the  books 
of  the  ancients  that  every  evil  contains  within 
itself  a  cure  or  a  destroyer.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  what  I  am  revealing  to  you  is  to  you  a 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH     209 

cure  for  this  hideous  evil,  but  I  do  say  that  what 
I  am  giving  you  is  a  destroyer  for  it,  and  that 
while  it  will  be  to  the  world  a  cure,  it  may 
leave  you  in  a  more  fiery  hell  than  the  one  of 
which  you  now  feel  the  flames.  I  do  not 
care  if  it  does.  When  I  am  through,  any 
member  of  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange 
who  feels  the  iron  in  his  soul  can  get  instant 
revenge  and  unlimited  wealth.  You  who 
are  turning  over  in  your  minds  the  considera- 
tion that  your  great  body  can  make  new  rules 
to  render  my  discovery  inoperative,  are  deal- 
ing with  a  shadow.  There  is  no  rule  or 
device  that  can  prevent  its  working.  There 
are  one  thousand  seats  in  the  New  York 
Stock  Exchange.  They  are  worth  to-day 
$95,000  apiece,  or  $95,000,000  in  all.  Their 
value  is  due  to  the  fact  that  this  Exchange 
deals  in  between  one  and  three  million  shares 
a  day.  Were  any  attempt  made  to  prevent 
the  operation  of  my  invention,  transactions 
would  because  of  such  attempt  drop  to  five  or 
ten  thousand  shares  per  day,  or  to  such  transac- 
tions as  represent  stock  that  will  be  actually 
delivered  and  actually  paid  for.  To  make 
my  invention  useless  it  must  be  made  im- 
possible to  buy  or  sell  the  same  share  of 
stock  more  than  once  at  one  session,  and 


210    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

short  selling,  which -is  now,  as  you  know,  the 
foundation  of  the  modern  stock-gambling 
structure,  must  likewise  be  made  impossible. 
If  this  could  be  done  the  $95,000,000  worth 
of  seats  in  the  Exchange  would  be  worth  less 
than  five  millions,  and,  what  is  of  far  greater 
import  to  all  the  people,  the  financial  world 
would  be  revolutionised.  Men  of  Wall  Street, 
do  not  fool  yourselves.  My  invention  is 
a  sure  destroyer  of  the  greatest  curse  in 
the  world,  stock-gambling." 

A  sullen  growl  rose  from  the  gamblers. 
Robert  Brownley  glared  down  his  defiance. 

"Let  me  show  you  the  impossibility  of 
preventing  in  the  future  anyone's  doing 
what  I  have  done  to  you  so  many  times  during 
the  past  five  years.  All  the  capital  required 
to  work  my  invention  is  nerve  and  despera- 
tion, or  nerve  without  desperation.  It  is 
well  known  to  you  that  there  are  at  all  times 
Exchange  members  who  will  commit  any 
crime,  barring  perhaps  murder,  to  gain  mil- 
lions. Your  members  have  from  time  to 
time  shown  nerve  or  desperation  enough  to 
embezzle,  raise  certificates,  give  bogus  checks, 
counterfeit  stocks  and  bonds,  and  this  for 
gain  of  less  than  millions,  and  when  detec- 
tion was  probable.  All  these  are  criminal 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    211 

offences  and  their  detection  is  sure  to  bring 
disgrace  and  State  prison.  Yet  members 
of  this  Exchange  desperate  enough  to  take 
the  chance,  when  confronted  with  loss  of 
fortune  and  open  bankruptcy,  have  always 
been  found  with  nerve  enough  to  attempt 
the  crimes.  I  repeat  that  there  are  at 
all  times  Exchange  members  who  will  com- 
mit any  crime,  barring  perhaps  murder,  to 
gain  millions.  That  you  may  see  that  my 
successors  will  surely  come  from  your  midst 
from  time  to  time  during  the  future  existence 
of  the  Exchange,  I  will  enumerate  the  dif- 
ferent classes  of  members  who  will  follow 
in  my  footsteps: 

"First,  the  'In  Gold  We  Trust'  schemer 
who  is  of  the  'System'  type,  but  who  is  out- 
side the  magic  circle.  A  man  of  this  class 
will  reason:  I  know  scores  of  men,  who 
stand  high  on  'the  Street'  and  in  the  social 
world,  who  have  tens  of  millions  that  they 
have  filched  by  'System'  tricks,  if  not  by 
legal  crimes.  If  I  perform  this  trick  of 
Brownley's,  the  trick  of  selling  short  until 
a  panic  is  produced,  I  shall  make  millions 
and  none  will  be  the  wiser.  For  all  I  know, 
many  of  the  multi-millionaires  whom  I  have 
seen  produce  panics  and  who  were  applauded 


212    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

by  'the  Street*  and  the  press  for  their  ability 
and  daring,  and  whose  standing,  business  and 
social,  is  now  the  highest,  were  only  doing 
this  same  thing,  and  having  been  successful, 
they  have  never  been  detected  or  suspected. 
But  even  suppose  I  fail,  which  can  only  be 
through  some  extraordinary  accident  happen- 
ing while  I  am  engaged  in  selling,  I  shall 
have  committed  no  crime,  and,  in  fact,  shall 
have  done  no  one  any  great  moral  wrong,  for  if 
I  fail  to  carry  out  my  contract  to  deliver 
the  stock  I  have  sold  in  trying  to  produce 
a  panic,  the  men  to  whom  I  have  sold  will 
be  no  worse  off  for  not  receiving  what  they 
bought;  in  fact  they  will  stand  just  where 
they  stood  before  I  attempted  to  bring  on 
a  panic. 

"Second,  if  an  Exchange  member  for  any 
reason  should  find  himself  overboard  and 
should  realise  that  he  must  publicly  become 
bankrupt  and  lose  all,  he  surely  would  be  a  fool 
not  to  attempt  to  produce  a  panic,  when  its 
production  would  enable  him  to  recoup  his 
losses  and  prevent  his  failure,  and  when  if 
by  accident  he  should  fail  in  his  attempt  to 
produce  a  panic,  the  penalty  would  simply 
be  his  bankruptcy,  which  would  have  taken 
place  in  any  event. 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    213 

"The  third  class  is  that  large  one  that 
always  will  exist  while  there  is  stock-gambling, 
a  class  of  honest,  square-dealing-play-the- 
game-fair-Exchange  men  who  would  take  no 
unfair  advantage  of  their  fellow-members 
until  they  become  awakened  to  the  knowl- 
edge that  they  are  about  to  be  ruined  by 
their  fellow-members'  trickery. 

"Next,  let  us  consider  further  whether 
it  is  possible  for  our  Exchange  to  prevent 
my  device  from  being  worked,  now  that  it 
is  known  to  all.  Suppose  the  Govern- 
ing Committee  was  informed  in  advance 
that  the  attempt  to  work  the  trick  was  to  be 
made.  If,  at  any  session,  after  gong-strike, 
the  Governing  Committee,  or  any  Exchange 
authority,  could  for  any  reason  compel  a  mem- 
ber to  cease  operating,  even  for  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  that  his  transactions 
were  legitimate,  the  entire  structure  of 
stock-gambling  would  fall.  Think  it  through: 
Suppose  a  man  like  Barry  Conant  or 
myself,  or  any  active  commission  broker, 
begins  the  execution  of  a  large  order  for  a 
client,  one,  say,  who  has  advance  infor- 
mation of  a  receivership,  a  fire  at  a  mine, 
the  death  of  a  President,  a  declaration  of 
war,  or  any  of  the  hundred  and  one  items 


of  information  that  must  be  acted  upon  in- 
stantly, where  a  delay  of  a  minute  would  ruin 
the  broker,  or  his  house,  or  its  clients. 
If  the  Governing  Committee  could  thus  call 
the  broker  to  account,  the  professional  bear 
or  the  schemer,  who  desired  to  prevent  him 
from  selling,  would  have  but  to  pass  the  word 
to  the  president  of  the  Exchange  that  the 
broker  in  question  was  about  to  work  Brown- 
ley's  discovery  and  he  could  be  taken  from 
the  crowd  and  before  he  returned  his  place 
could  be  taken  by  others  and  he  could  be 
ruined. 

"Men  of  Wall  Street,  it  is  impossible  to 
prevent  the  repetition  of  those  acts  by  which 
in  five  years  I  have  accumulated  a  billion 
dollars,  impossible  so  long  as  a  short  sale 
or  a  repurchase  and  resale,  is  allowed.  When 
short  sales,  and  repurchases  and  resales, 
are  made  impossible,  stock  speculation  will 
be  dead.  When  stock  speculation  is  dead, 
the  people  can  no  longer  be  robbed  by  the 
'System.'  In  leaving  you,  the  Exchange, 
and  stock-gambling  forever,  as  I  shall  when 
I  leave  this  platform,  I  will  say  from  the 
depth  of  a  heart  that  has  been  broken,  from 
the  profoundity  of  a  soul  that  has  been 
withered  by  the  *  System's'  poison,  with  a  full 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    215 

sense  of  my  responsibility  to  my  fellow-man 
and  to  my  God,  that  I  advise  every  one  of 
you  to  do  what  I  have  done  and  to  do  it 
quickly,  before  the  doing  of  it  by  others 
shall  have  made  it  impossible,  before  the 
doing  of  it  by  others  shall  have  blown  up 
the  whole  stock-gambling  structure.  In 
accepting  my  advice  you  can  quiet  your 
conscience,  those  of  you  who  have  any, 
with  this  argument:  'If  I  start,  I  am  sure 
of  success.  If  I  succeed,  no  one  will  be 
the  wiser.  The  millions  I  secure  I  will  take 
from  men  who  took  them  from  others,  and 
who  would  take  mine.  The  more  I  and 
others  take,  the  sooner  will  come  the  day 
when  the  stock-gambling  structure  will  fall.' 

"The  day  on  which  the  stock-gambling 
structure  falls  is  the  day  for  which  all  honest 
men  and  women  should  pray." 

Bob  Brownley  paused  and  let  his  eyes 
sweep  his  dumfounded  audience.  There  was 
not  a  murmur.  The  crowd  was  speechless. 

Again  his  eyes  swept  the  room.  Then 
he  slowly  raised  his  right  hand  with  fist 
clenched,  as  though  about  to  deal  a  blow. 

"Men  of  Wall  Street" — his  voice  was  now 
deep  and  solemn — "to  show  that  Robert 
Brownley  knew  what  was  fitting  for  the  last 


216    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

day  of  his  career,  he  has  revealed  to  you 
the  trick — and  more. 

"Many  of  you  are  desperate.  Many  of 
you  by  to-morrow  will  be  ruined.  The 
time  of  all  times  for  such  to  put  my  trick  in 
practice  is  now.  The  victim  of  victims  is 
ready  for  the  experiment.  I  am  he.  I  have 
a  billion  dollars.  With  this  billion  dollars 
I  am  able  to  buy  ten  million  shares  of  the 
leading  stocks  and  to  pay  for  them,  even 
though  after  I  have  bought  they  fall  a  hun- 
dred dollars  a  share.  Here  is  your  chance 
to  prevent  your  ruin,  your  chance  to  retrieve 
your  fortune,  your  chance*  to  secure  revenge 
upon  me,  the  one  who  has  robbed  you." 

He  paused  only  long  enough  for  his  astound- 
ing advice  to  connect  with  his  listener's  now 
keenly  sensitive  nerve  centres;  then  deep 
and  clear  rang  out,  "Barry  Conant."  The 
wiry  form  of  Bob's  old  antagonist  leaped 
to  the  rostrum. 

"I  authorise  you  to  buy  any  part  of  ten 
million  shares  of  the  leading  stocks  at  any 
price  up  to  fifty  points  above  the  present 
market.  There  is  my  check-book  signed  in 
blank,  and  I  authorise  you  to  use  it  up  to 
a  billion  dollars,  and  I  agree  to  have  in 
bank  to-morrow  sufficient  funds  to  meet 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    217 

any  checks  you  draw.  You  have  failed  to-day 
for  seven  millions,  and,  therefore,  cannot 
trade,  but  I  herewith  announce  that  I  will  pay 
all  the  indebtedness  of  Barry  Conant  and 
his  house.  Therefore  he  is  now  in  good 
standing."  Bob  had  kept  his  eye  on  the  great 
clock;  as  the  last  word  passed  his  lips,  the 
President's  gavel  descended. 

With  a  mighty  rush  the  gamblers  leaped 
for  the  different  poles.  Barry  Conant  with 
lightning  rapidity  gave  his  orders  to  twenty  of 
his  assistants,  who,  when  Bob  Brownley 
called  for  Conant,  had  gathered  around  their 
chief.  In  less  than  a  minute  the  dollar- 
battle  of  the  age  was  on,  a  battle  such  as  no 
man  had  ever  seen  before.  It  required  no 
supernatural  wisdom  for  any  man  on  the 
floor  to  see  that  Bob  Brownley's  seed  had 
fallen  in  superheated  soil,  that  his  until  now 
secret  hellite  was  about  to  be  tested.  It 
needed  no  expert  in  the  mystic  art  of  decipher- 
ing the  wall  hieroglyphics  of  Old  Hag  Fate 
to  see  that  the  hands  on  the  clock  of  the 
* '  System ' '  were  approaching  twelve .  It  needed 
no  ear  trained  to  hear  human  heart  and  soul 
beats  to  detect  the  approaching  sound  of 
onrushing  doom  to  the  stock-gambling  struc- 
ture. The  deafening  roar  of  the  brokers 


218 

that  had  broken  the  stillness  following  Robert 
Brownley's  fateful  speech  had  awakened  echoes 
that  threatened  to  shake  down  the  Exchange 
walls.  The  surging  mob  on  the  outside 
was  roaring  like  a  million  hungry  lions  in  an 
Arbestan  run  at  slaughter  time. 


CHAPTER  X 

instant  after  the  gong  sounded 
Bob  Brownley  was  alone  on  the 
floor  at  the  foot  of  the  president's  desk. 
His  form  was  swaying  like  a  reed  on  the 
edge  of  the  cyclone's  path.  I  jumped  to 
his  side.  His  brother,  who  had  during  Bob's 
harangue  been  vainly  endeavouring  to  beat 
his  way  through  the  crowd,  was  there  first. 
"For  God's  sake,  Bob,  hear  me.  Word 
came  from  your  house  half  an  hour  ago  of 
the  miracle:  Beulah  has  awakened  to  her 
past.  Her  mind  is  clear;  the  nurses  are 
frantic  for  you  to  come  to  her." 

He  got  no  further.  With  a  mad  bellow 
and  a  bound,  like  a  tortured  bull  that  sees 
the  arena  walls  go  down,  Bob  rushed  out 
through  the  nearest  door,  which,  I  thanked 
God,  was  a  side  one  leading  to  the  street 
where  the  crowd  was  thinnest.  He  cast  a 
wild  look  around.  His  eyes  lighted  on  an 
empty  automobile  whose  chauffeur  had 
deserted  to  the  crowd.  It  was  the  work  of 
a  second  to  crank  it;  of  another  to  jump 

219 


220    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

into  the  front  seat.  Quick  as  had  been  his 
movement,  I  was  behind  him  in  the  rear 
seat.  With  a  bound  the  great  machine  leaped 
through  the  crowd. 

"In  the  name  of  Christ,  Bob,  be  careful," 
I  yelled,  as  he  hurled  the  iron  monster  through 
the  throng,  scattering  it  to  the  right  and  left 
as  the  mower  scatters  the  sheaves  in  the 
wheat  fields.  Some  were  crushed  beneath 
its  wheels.  Bob  Brownley  heard  not  theii 
screams,  heard  not  the  curses  of  those  whc 
escaped.  He  was  on  his  feet,  his  body 
crouched  low  over  the  steering-wheel,  which 
he  grasped  in  his  vise-like  hand3.  His  hatless 
head  was  thrust  far  out,  as  though  it  strove 
to  get  to  Beulah  Sands  ahead  of  his  body. 
His  teeth  were  set,  and  as  I  had  jumped 
into  the  machine  I  had  noted  that  his  eyes 
were  those  of  a  maniac,  who  saw  sanity 
just  ahead  if  he  could  but  get  to  it  in  time. 
His  ears  were  deaf  not  only  to  the  howl  of 
the  terrified  throng  and  the  curses  of  the 
teamsters  who  frantically  pulled  their  horses 
to  the  curb,  but  to  my  warnings  as  well. 
He  swung  the  machine  around  the  corner 
at  New  Street  and  into  Wall  as  though  it 
had  been  the  broadest  boulevard  in  the  park. 
He  took  Wall  Street  at  a  bound  I  was  sure 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

would  land  us  through  the  fence  into  Trinity's 
churchyard.  But  no.  Again  he  turned  the 
corner,  throwing  the  Juggernaut  on  its  out- 
side wheels  from  Wall  Street  into  Broadway 
as  the  crowds  on  the  sidewalk  held  their 
breath  in  horror.  I,  too,  was  on  my  feet, 
but  crouching  as  I  hung  to  the  sides.  Thank 
God,  that  usually  crowded  thoroughfare  was 
free  from  vehicles  as  far  up  as  I  could  see, 
n  beyond  the  Astor  House.  What  could 
;  mean  ?  Was  that  divinity  which  'tis  said 
protects  the  drunkard  and  the  idiot  about 
to  aid  the  mad  rush  of  this  love-frenzied 
creature  to  his  long-lost  but  newly  returned 
dear  one  ?  I  heard  the  frantic  clang  of  gongs, 
and  as  we  shot  by  the  World  Building,  I 
>aw  ahead  of  us  two  plunging  automobiles 
filled  with  men.  'Twas  from  them  the  gong 
clamour  sounded.  As  we  drew  nearer  I 
saw  that  these  were  the  cars  of  the  fire  chiefs 
answering  a  call.  I  thanked  God  again 
and  again  as  I  yelled  into  Bob's  ear,  "For 
Beulah's  sake,  Bob,  don't  pass;  if  you  do, 
we'll  run  into  a  blockade.  If  we  keep  in 
the  rear  they'll  clear  our  way,  and  we  may 
get  to  her  alive."  I  do  not  know  whether 
he  heard,  but  he  held  the  machine  in  the 
•ear  of  the  other  cars  and  did  not  try  to  pass. 


222    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

Away  we  went  on  our  mad  rush  through 
crowded  Broadway.  At  Union  Square  we 
lost  our  way-clearers.  As  our  automobile 
jumped  across  Fourteenth  Street  into  Fourth 
Avenue,  Bob  must  have  opened  her  up  to 
the  last  notch,  for  she  seemed  to  leap  through 
the  air.  We  sent  two  wagons  crashing  across 
the  sidewalks  into  the  buildings.  Cries  of 
rage  arose  above  the  din  of  the  machine, 
and  seemed  to  follow  in  our  wake.  Bob 
was  dead  to  all  we  passed.  His  entire  being 
seemed  set  on  what  was  ahead.  I  knew 
he  was  an  expert  in  the  handling  of  the  auto- 
mobile, for  since  his  misfortune,  automobiling 
with  Beulah  Sands  had  been  his  favourite 
pastime,  but  who  could  expect  to  carry  that 
plunging,  swaying  car  to  Forty-second  Street! 
Bob  seemed  to  be  performing  the  wondrous 
task.  We  shot  from  curb  to  curb  and  around 
and  in  front  of  vehicles  and  foot  passengers 
as  though  the  driver's  eyes  and  hands  were 
inspired. 

Across  the  square  at  last  and  on  up  Fourth 
Avenue  to  Twenty-sixth  Street.  Then  a  dizzy- 
ing whirl  into  Madison.  Was  he  going 
to  keep  to  it  until  he  got  to  Forty-second 
Street  and  try  to  make  Fifth  Avenue  along 
that  congested  block  with  its  crush  of  Grand 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    223 

Central  passengers  and  lines  upon  lines  of 
hacks  and  teams  ?  No.  His  head  must  be 
clear.  Again  he  threw  the  great  machine 
around  the  corner  and  into  Fortieth  Street. 
For  a  part  of  the  block  our  wheels  rode  the 
sidewalk,  and  I  awaited  the  crash.  It  did 
not  come.  Surely  the  new  world  Bob  was 
speeding  to  must  be  a  kind  one,  else  why 
should  Hag  Fate,  who  had  been  at  the  steer- 
wheel  of  his  life-car  during  the  last  five  years, 
carry  him  safely  through  what  looked  a  dozen 
sure  deaths?  Without  slacking  speed  a  jot 
we  swung  around  the  corner  of  Fortieth 
into  Fifth  Avenue.  The  road  was  clear 
to  Forty-second;  there  a  dense  jam  of  cars, 
teams,  and  carriages  blocked  the  crossing. 
Bob  must  have  seen  the  solid  wall  for  I  heard 
his  low  muttered  curse.  Nothing  else  to 
indicate  that  we  were  blocked  with  his  goal 
in  sight.  He  never  touched  the  speed  con- 
troller, but  took  the  two  blocks  as  though 
shot  from  a  catapult.  The  two?  No,  one, 
and  three-quarters  of  the  next,  for  when 
within  a  score  of  yards  of  the  black  wall  he 
jammed  down  the  brakes,  and  the  iron  mass 
ground  and  shook  as  though  it  would  rend 
itself  to  atoms,  but  it  stopped  with  its  dasher 
and  front  wheels  wedged  in  between  a  car 


224    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

and  a  dray.  It  had  not  stopped  when  Bob 
was  off  and  up  the  avenue  like  a  hound  on 
the  end-in-sight  trail.  I  was  after  him  while 
the  astonished  bystanders  stared  in  wonder. 
As  we  neared  Bob's  house  I  could  see  people 
on  the  stoop.  I  heard  Bob's  secretary  shout, 
"  Thank  God,  Mr.  Brownley,  you  have  come. 
She  is  in  the  office.  I  found  her  there,  quiet 
and  recovered.  She  did  not  ask  a  question. 
She  said,  'Tell  Mr.  Brownley  when  he  comes 
that  I  should  like  to  see  him.'  Then  she 
ordered  me  to  get  the  afternoon  paper.  I 
handed  it  to  her  an  hour  ago.  I  think  she 
believes  herself  in  her  old  office.  I  shut  off 
the  floor  as  you  instructed.  I  did  not  dare 
go  to  her  for  fear  she  would  ask  questions. 
I  have" — but  Bob  was  up  the  stairs  two 
and  three  steps  at  a  time. 

My  breath  was  almost  gone  and  it  took  me 
minutes  to  get  to  the  second  floor.  My 
feet  touched  the  top  stair,  when,  O  God! 
that  sound!  For  five  long  years  I  had  been 
trying  to  get  it  out  of  my  ears,  but  now  more 
guttural,  more  agonised  than  before,  it  broke 
upon  my  tortured  senses.  I  did  not  need  to 
seek  its  direction.  With  a  bound  I  was  at 
the  threshold  of  Beulah  Sands-Brownley's 
office.  In  that  brief  time  the  groans  had 


FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH    225 

stilled.  For  one  instant  I  closed  my  eyes, 
for  the  very  atmosphere  of  that  hall  moaned 
and  groaned  death.  I  opened  them.  Yes, 
I  knew  it.  There  at  the  desk  was  the  beauti- 
ful gray-clad  figure  of  five  years  ago.  There 
the  two  arms  resting  on  the  desk.  There 
the  two  beautiful  hands  holding  the  open 
paper,  but  the  eyes,  those  marvellous  gray- 
blue  doors  to  an  immortal  soul — they  were 
closed  forever.  The  exquisitely  beautiful  face 
was  cold  and  white  and  peaceful.  Beulah 
Sands  was  dead.  The  hell-hounds  of  the 
"  System  "  had  overtaken  its  maimed  and  hunt- 
ed victim;  it  had  added  her  beautiful  heart  to 
the  bags  and  barrels  and  hogsheads  stored  away 
in  its  big  "  business'-is-business  "  safe-deposit 
vaults.  My  eyes  in  sick  pity  sought  the  form 
of  my  old  schoolmate,  my  college  chum,  my 
partner,  my  friend,  the  man  I  loved.  He 
was  on  his  knees.  His  agonised  face  was 
turned  to  his  wife.  His  clasped  hands  had 
been  raised  in  an  awful,  heart-crushing  prayer 
as  his  Maker  touched  the  bell.  Bob  Brown- 
ley's  great  brown  eyes  were  closed,  his  clasped 
hands  had  dropped  against  his  wife's  head, 
and  in  dropping  had  unloosed  the  glorious 
golden-brown  waves  until  in  fond  abandon 
they  had  coiled  around  his  arms  and  brow 


226    FRIDAY,  THE  THIRTEENTH 

as  though  she  for  whom  he  had  sacrificed  all 
was  shielding  his  beloved  head  from  the 
chills  and  dark  mists  of  the  black  rive 
that  laps  the  brink  of  the  eternal  rest. 
The  "System"  had  skewered  Robert  Brown- 
ley's  heart  too.  I  staggered  to  his  side. 
As  I  touched  his  now  fast-icing  brow  my 
eyes  fell  upon  the  great  black  headlines 
spread  across  the  top  of  the  paper  that  Beulah 
Sands  had '  been  reading  when  the  all-kind 
God  had  cut  her  bonds: 

FRIDAY  THE  THIRTEENTH 

And  beneath  in  one  column: 

TERRIBLE  TRAGEDY  IN  VIRGINIA 

THE  RICHEST  MAN  IN  THE  STATE,  THOMAS 
REINHART,  MULTI-MILLIONAIRE,  WHILE  TEM- 
PORARILY INSANE  FROM  THE  LOSS  OF  HIS 
WIFE  AND  DAUGHTER,  AND  OF  HIS  ENOR- 
MOUS FORTUNE,  WHICH  WAS  SHATTERED 
IN  TO-DAY'S  AWFUL  PANIC,  CUT  HIS  THROAT. 
HIS  DEATH  WAS  INSTANTANEOUS. 

In  another  column: 

.    ,'.      '  - 

ROBERT  BROWNLEY  CREATES  THE  MOST  AWFUL 
PANIC  IN  HISTORY,  AND  SPREADS  WRECK 
AND  RUIN  THROUGHOUT  THE  CIVILISED 
WORLD. 


PUBLISHER'S  NOTE 

The  following  are  fac-similes  of  a  few  of  the 
letters  received  by  the  author  during  the  serial 
publication  of  "  Friday,  the  Thirteenth." 


PAULIST   r*.THCMS 
JIM  Pint  STBIET  „ 


27 


Obwagfec. 


GRIMNBU.  IOWA.  NOV  83  1906 


*^ 


f  I/  ,         /  .  fi  '     J.  Jf 

^A^S?^^V^.  *  jfc*^  /**~ 


L.GuY    DCNNCTT. 


~  V-^A*^  £0  6s/' 


Spokane,  Wash., 

December  28.  1906. 


Mr.  Thomas  W.  ijawson, 
Boston, 

Mass* 

Dear  Sir: 

I  have  lived  nine  years" in  Anaconda, , 
Montana,  and  therefore  become  sorcewhat  familiar 
with  amalgamated  copper,  etc.      I  want  to  ssy  I 
have  followed  your  writings  with  lively  interest 
end  have  sworn  by  all  the   statements  you  have 
made.      It  is,  therefore,  with  the  greatest  re- 
gret that. I  am  compelled  to  state  that  my  faith 
in  you  has  been  shattered* 

When  you  state  in  your  story  of 
"Friday  the  13th"  that  the     heroine  walked  in 
to  an  office  in  New  York  in  the  middle  of  July 
with  a  feather  turban  on  her  head  I  simply  cannot 
swallow  it.      That  a  lady  of  refinement  and  good 
tastt  with  f 30, COO  in  the  bank,  and  anxious  to 
make  a  good  appearance,  should  walk  into  an 
office  in  New  York  with  a  winter  hat  taxes  my 
credulity  to  the  breaking  point.     However,  be 
that  as  it  may,  .1  want  to  say  that  you  have  made 
a  big  fight  against  great  odds  and  that  I  admire 
your  pluck  and  genius,  and  I  hope  you  will  keep 
right  on  fighting  for  the  right. 

By  the  way,  I  might  as  well  admit  that 
it  was  my  wife  rfcothe  way  is  a  superior  woman 
who  celled  my  attention  to  the  turban  when  I  was 
reading  your  story  aloud  to  her.     I  am. 


Verytruly  yours. 


te^u*<«**/  jft    jf**** 

£/ 


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St.  Paul,  Minn., 

November  26,  1906. 


Mr.  Thomas :W.  rawscn, 
Boston, 

Vase* 

Dear  Sirj 

I  wisfc  to  congratulate  you  on  the  good 
story  you  wrote  in  Everybody's  Magazine  this 
month.       It  is  the  best  story  I  ever  read- 
and  the  best  I  ever  saw  published  in  any  maga- 
zine. 

I  em  well  posted  on  the  "Brokers" 
business  and  enjoyed  your  story  very  much. 
I  hope  you  will  continue  to  write  them.    I 
know  they  are  taken  more  from,  real  life  than 
immagination.       I  am  sure  they  will  be  appreciated 
as  much  es  "Fre&zied  Finance".     I  have  taken  the 
liberty  to  send  a  good  word* to  Ridgway's. 


Western  Union  Telegraph  Co 


Lcc  Angeles,  Calif., 
Dscember  11,  1906. 


1'r.  Thomas  W.  Lavrson, 
Boston, 

Was  s. 

}fy  dear  Sir: 

It  was  indeed  a  pleasure  to  read  your 
novel  in  this  month's  Everybody's.    Being  an 
old  trader  myself,  I  have  appreciated  every 
word  of  it  and  look  forward  for  the  continuation ; 
with  much  interest. 

I  just  want  "to  say  this  t0o  -  that  any- 
one  who  says  that  you  cannot  write  anything  else 
but  "Street"  gossip  had  better  cover  his  "shorts". 

Wishing  you.  all  kinds  of  success,  and 
with  congratulations  on  your  splendid  work,  I  am 

Very  sincerely, 

d^^y^^ 

Citizens  Nat'l  Bank  Bldg., 


Washington,  D.  C.» 

December  1,  1906. 


Thos.  WULawson,  Esq., 
Boston, 

Mass. 

Dear  Sir: 

I  nave  just  read  with  very  great 
pleasure  and  edification  the  first  installment  of 
your  excellent  story  "Friday  the  13th".  It  is 
so  far  a  masterpiece. 

Congratulating  you.  I  remain 
Very  truly, 


Rumford  Tails,  Maine, 
November  20, 1906 < 


Mr.  Tom  Lawson, 
Boston, 
Mass. 

Dear  Sir: 

I  have  read  all  your  writings  in 
Everybody's,  including  the  first  installment  of 
your  story  in  the  December  number,  and  I  must  say 
that  I  am  more  than  pleased  with.it.     As  a  writer 
of  fiction  *you  are  sure  to  make  another  big  hit* 
Yours  truly, 

.  J 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


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